Thursday, December 10, 2015

Proportional Representation doesn't represent

#cdnpoli #cpc

During the last lengthy election campaign, the shrill and vitriol from Dippers and Liberals about Stephen Harper went to a whole other crazy level.  Claims he was undemocratic and a dictator were far-fetched considering a full democratic election occurred and his democratically lost the election.

Now, as promised by Trudeau mind you, Liberals want to introduce proportional representation.

Tasha Kheiridden wrote a good article on why the preferential ballot method of proportional representation doesn't properly represent the people.  She writes:

In the recent federal election, this would have benefited the Liberals significantly, because Liberal and NDP voters were more likely to name each other as their preferred second choice. In contrast, most Conservative supporters had no second choice, which means their votes would have been counted once, and if they didn’t achieve the magic 50%-plus-one mark, dropped out of the equation altogether. The Council of Canadians published a simulation run by ThreeHundredEight.com, based on the 2015 results and found that under a ranked ballot, the Liberals would have elected 224 members instead of 184; the Conservatives, 61 vs. 99; the NDP, 50 vs. 44; the Bloc 2 vs. 10. Only the Greens would have obtained the same result: 1.
Preferential or ranked ballots thus don’t create a more proportional system; if anything, they tend to increase the proportion of seats taken by the dominant party. And in a country like Canada, where there are three parties, one on the left, one in the centre and one on the right, it is most likely that in any election, the second choice of either “extreme” would be the middle, not each other — thus entrenching successive Liberal governments.
The Trudeau Liberal government appears to be moving forward with this dangerous proposal without putting such a sweeping change to our democracy and society to the people in a referendum.

Or is that too undemocratic?