Wednesday Oct 10 is Ontario’s next provincial election. This is a particularly important vote, since it includes a referendum on the newly proposed MMP (mixed-member proportional) system.
I believe MMP has the potential to make our electoral system a great deal healthier. The old system forces you to compromise between the quality of your local candidate and the party who you believe will do the best job for the province, because you can only have one vote. The newly proposed MMP allows you to separate those judgements by voting for a candidate and then also voting for the party you believe in. MMP should lead to more diversity in our political representatives, and it promises every citizen an equal chance to be heard and to change the status quo.
You can read more about it on wikipedia, on the official MMP website, or on voteforMMP.ca.
The referendum needs a 60% majority to pass, so high voter turnout is particularly important. British Columbia recently had a similar referendum and fell just short with 58% approval. So pass on the word, and get out and vote!
MMP is a voting system designed by voters to be good for voters. It will give voters the power to hold political parties accountable. That’s why some people don’t like it.
MPP gives every voter two votes on one ballot, the vote you have now to elect your local member in your riding, and another vote for a political party. The real difference is that the new party vote will actually help to elect someone every time, in contrast to the riding vote we have now, under which most of us vote for someone who does not get elected, so we end up with a government that most of us did not vote for.
We will continue to elect 90 MMPs the way we do now in single member ridings. We will also elect 39 MPPs at large province-wide. The total number of seats each party receives is determined by the number of party votes they receive. Each party will elect enough at-large MPPs to top up their riding MPPs so that each party receives the total number of seats they earned in proportion to the party votes they received.
The at-large members are elected by the party votes of voters across the province, and they will be accountable to the people who elected them. Most of them will open constituency offices where they live, which means that every party will elect MPPs in every part of the province, and every voter will have access, not just to one MPP, but to MPPs from every party.
Every voter and every part of the province will have stronger representation under MMP.
Under our current system, election results are always horribly distorted, sometimes to the extent that the party with the most votes loses the election.
MMP gives power to voters, not parties. It is our current system that gives one political party unlimited and unaccountable power, even though most people voted against them.
More women and minorities will be elected under MMP. Under the current system, we have 25% women in the Legislature, and we have never elected an aboriginal person. It’s a disgrace! Every country except Cuba that has at least 30% women in its national assembly uses a proportional voting system.
We will have fairer election results under MMP.
Nobody is “appointed” to the Legislature under MMP. The province-wide seats will be hotly contested, because there are not enough of them to go around.
Under the current system, most of us live in safe ridings and already know who will be elected in our riding before the votes are cast. It is our current riding MPPs who are more likely to be “appointed party hacks”.
Voters will have more real choices under MMP.
For yet more information, go to these sources:
The Citizens’ Assembly website: http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca
The Vote for MMP campaign: http://www.VoteforMMP.ca
And above all, READ MY BLOG!: http://www.VoteforMMP.ca/blog/44
Pingback: My Own Pirate Radio » 2007 Ontario Election Roundup