Students do care about voting…but voting sucks! Let's fix it!
The Globe and Mail has had a few articles recently on the upcoming referendum, some fair and some quite uninformed. The following is a recent response I sent in to one of the more reasonable articles that still needed a few comments:
The explanation of BC-STV given by Greg Jones is on the whole fair and balanced except for two points. Read the rest of this entry »
I highly recommend this excellent blog post by Andrew Coyne, which discusses how under proportional representation the differences would be far greater than people voting the same and getting a fair seat count (with the Bloc seat share substantially reduced), and a different coalition as a result.
Under proportional representation people would vote differently (recall all the strategic voting initiatives last election), and voters would have more choice (The Progressive Conservative and Reform parties would still exist). With the hope of a false majority extinguished, any party that wished to be included in the ruling majority coalition government would moderate their policies sufficiently to make them broadly acceptable, and definitely wouldn’t be bringing forward confrontational/controversial legislation for a confidence vote! This would results in government that is more stable and centrist, yet responsive to a diversity of voter interests.
So yes, we would probably have a coalition, but politics and the coalition would likely be very different!
Read the story here:
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/12/10/different-electoral-system-different-coalition/
By: Bruce Krayenhoff
Coalition government? Yes, but it’s not the one we deserve
After 141 years is Canada finally, albeit accidentally, on the path to modern representative democracy? Don’t pop the champagne cork yet. We still have a way to go, but the law of unintended consequences may be at work in Ottawa. Read the rest of this entry »
The recent municipal election results illustrates how under our current voting systems election results ironically depend more on which parts of the political spectrum are united than on what voters actually want (This applies provincially and federally as well)!
I wrote an article about the recent municipal election that has now been published in the Ubyssey, the campus paper of UBC.
By: Bruce Krayenhoff
Ten days after the US elections, the votes are still being counted in several states. Preliminary estimates show a turnout of about 61.4% of eligible voters, the highest since 1968, which, combined with Canada’s historic low turnout in its recent federal election, means that for the first time in recent memory the US actually had higher voter turnout than Canada. Read the rest of this entry »
The Canadian Federal election is now a fading memory behind the glare of the historic and captivating US election. Now that the Americans have made their choice its enough to leave the committed democracy dependants among us with a horrible election hangover. Read the rest of this entry »
A few updates on interesting stories I’ve come across around the web in the past day or two about electoral reform. Read the rest of this entry »
This past election in 2008 seems to have opened a lot of eyes about the state of our electoral system. Fairvote canada has compiled Read the rest of this entry »
