Referendum Failure
The Province of Ontario has just undertaken an experimental referendum to test the public's will to change our electoral system from "first past the post" to one that comes a close second to proportional representation. A citizens' panel appointed to study various types of electoral voting systems achieved a result in synthesizing a type of system that would be a variant of each.
Named mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, a variant has already been put to a vote in British Columbia and there too, failed to enthuse voters who preferred to stick with the tried-and-true.
The old familiar system, inadequate in representing the true values ascribed in population-voter percentages used for several centuries in the election of politicians to represent the public interest through the voting public's stated will. Legislation to alter the current system isn't on the horizon any time soon, since the public voted overwhelmingly to retain the system we've been long familiar with.
Ensuring that the same tired old establishment, entitled and familiar parties and their hackneyed representatives will be able to continue to count on majority governments, the occasional minority government appearing less frequently.
Despite that a minority of the voting public will have voted them into office. Rather than a system that would recognize the power of the popular vote, enabling smaller or emerging parties to retain their fair share of the vote, translated into proper recognition and seats in the parliamentary tradition. Casting one vote for an elected representative and another for a party of choice might have given the people of the province more of a vested interest in the voting process itself.
Retaining the old system of 'first-past-the-post' is the easy, lazy way out of this ongoing dilemma of unfair distribution and representation, not truly reflective of the popular vote. To augment the sense of failure in this promising initiative is the realization that increasingly fewer eligible voters are troubling themselves to go out and visit the ballot box to do their civic duty. In some ways it's easy enough to understand why this lassitude of opinion and laxity in civil duty should arise.
Why bother, after all. When one's vote for any candidate other than the leading two parties results in nothing significant. It's a wasted vote. While the vote has not gone to either of the two contending leaders, used instead to indicate a desire for an alternative, or at the very least an alternative, contestable presence, reality of the current system is that the vote has vanished into the ether, the result being that fringe parties, emerging parties of conscience, have no opportunity to lift themselves out of their unknown and unappreciated status.
While there has been a vigorous debate in the print news media about the controversial MMP alternative system, with many columnists taking sides and urging greater understanding of the issues, there has been scant information propagated by the government body whose responsibility it is to communicate with voters to inform them adequately pre-referendum. The only advertisement/explanation I saw was a full-page production that appeared on the very day of the election and referendum.
Leading one to wonder whether political shenanigans were involved, with interference in place to mitigate against substantially adequate information sharing for the purpose of maintaining the status quo.
Still, there appears to be a general level of interest in the process of eventual change in voting systems. It would appear that the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm, Sweden and the political science department of Harvard University are tuning in to the provincial experiment, curious about this emerging experience in direct democracy. In general recognition that it's about time the system currently in use in North America reflect the temper of the times.
While the current system reflected the ease by which voting results could be tabulated, in contrast to a more involved system of tabulation creating an atmosphere of greater effort in counting votes and keeping tabs, we're now in an age of computerized tabulation, enhancing the potential of a more democratically representative system. Rather than the current system that rewards partisan politics in a dominant-party environment.
It's an issue that will be re-visited. It won't go away. There's a real need for change, and although this particular referendum didn't seize the public interest because it was little understood and the public ill prepared to attend to it, the time will come.
Named mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, a variant has already been put to a vote in British Columbia and there too, failed to enthuse voters who preferred to stick with the tried-and-true.
The old familiar system, inadequate in representing the true values ascribed in population-voter percentages used for several centuries in the election of politicians to represent the public interest through the voting public's stated will. Legislation to alter the current system isn't on the horizon any time soon, since the public voted overwhelmingly to retain the system we've been long familiar with.
Ensuring that the same tired old establishment, entitled and familiar parties and their hackneyed representatives will be able to continue to count on majority governments, the occasional minority government appearing less frequently.
Despite that a minority of the voting public will have voted them into office. Rather than a system that would recognize the power of the popular vote, enabling smaller or emerging parties to retain their fair share of the vote, translated into proper recognition and seats in the parliamentary tradition. Casting one vote for an elected representative and another for a party of choice might have given the people of the province more of a vested interest in the voting process itself.
Retaining the old system of 'first-past-the-post' is the easy, lazy way out of this ongoing dilemma of unfair distribution and representation, not truly reflective of the popular vote. To augment the sense of failure in this promising initiative is the realization that increasingly fewer eligible voters are troubling themselves to go out and visit the ballot box to do their civic duty. In some ways it's easy enough to understand why this lassitude of opinion and laxity in civil duty should arise.
Why bother, after all. When one's vote for any candidate other than the leading two parties results in nothing significant. It's a wasted vote. While the vote has not gone to either of the two contending leaders, used instead to indicate a desire for an alternative, or at the very least an alternative, contestable presence, reality of the current system is that the vote has vanished into the ether, the result being that fringe parties, emerging parties of conscience, have no opportunity to lift themselves out of their unknown and unappreciated status.
While there has been a vigorous debate in the print news media about the controversial MMP alternative system, with many columnists taking sides and urging greater understanding of the issues, there has been scant information propagated by the government body whose responsibility it is to communicate with voters to inform them adequately pre-referendum. The only advertisement/explanation I saw was a full-page production that appeared on the very day of the election and referendum.
Leading one to wonder whether political shenanigans were involved, with interference in place to mitigate against substantially adequate information sharing for the purpose of maintaining the status quo.
Still, there appears to be a general level of interest in the process of eventual change in voting systems. It would appear that the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm, Sweden and the political science department of Harvard University are tuning in to the provincial experiment, curious about this emerging experience in direct democracy. In general recognition that it's about time the system currently in use in North America reflect the temper of the times.
While the current system reflected the ease by which voting results could be tabulated, in contrast to a more involved system of tabulation creating an atmosphere of greater effort in counting votes and keeping tabs, we're now in an age of computerized tabulation, enhancing the potential of a more democratically representative system. Rather than the current system that rewards partisan politics in a dominant-party environment.
It's an issue that will be re-visited. It won't go away. There's a real need for change, and although this particular referendum didn't seize the public interest because it was little understood and the public ill prepared to attend to it, the time will come.
posted by Pieface @ 1:32 PM
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