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Flogging a dead horse
Oct. 13th, 2007 11:27 amIn answer to this article, I wrote the following letter to the editor:
Mr. Urquart, in his column, seems to think that the way we elect our representatives is a minor thing, and the real job is to get on with the real work of government. He believes the voters of the province understood the proposed change to the system and rejected it.
The polls do not bear this out. They showed, throughout the campaign, that people really didn’t have a clear idea of what MMP would mean. Politicians didn’t talk about it, or did so in the vaguest of non-partisan terms. The referendum happened in a vacuum, so that voters made up their minds based on incomplete evidence and the opinions of newspaper columnists like himself.
I have a particular bone to pick with Mr. Urquart’s statement that the reformers believe proportionality should trump accountability, tradition, simplicity and stability.
Anyone who believes that MMP would lead to less accountability for representatives hasn’t studied the countries in which it has been running smoothly for decades, like Germany. There, it’s a truism that list seats go primarily to opposition members while riding seats are the purview of the governing party. Translation: if the opposition members elected from lists want to form a government, they have to get a riding seat the next time out. List members and riding members both fight for riding nominations and the votes of individual constituents. That means at least two representatives courting each vote. That doesn’t strike me as a lack of accountability – in fact, it strikes me as better accountability, because you get to see two candidates in action before voting for either of them, it eliminates the incumbent edge, and it maintains the local character of elections.
I don’t see tradition as a good reason to keep things as they are. I’m a firm believer in, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but citing tradition as an argument against MMP is a way of saying, “we know it’s broke, but we’ve always done it this way so we’re not changing.” If the traditional way doesn’t work, it needs to be adjusted. Simplicity is in the same category. Simplicity at the expense of functionality is a bargain with the devil. Let’s go with the simplest system that works. First-past-the-post doesn’t fulfil that requirement.
Which brings us to stability. Stability is a straw man argument, because there’s no good reason why a minority government can’t be stable. Again, the matter of Germany: they get away with reasonable intervals between elections because their politicians work at forming coalitions. But even if you assume that a minority government is by definition less stable, you’re forced to ask the question: what price do we pay for our stable majority governments? And the answer is: the disenfranchisement of the 58% of voters who didn’t vote for the winning party, and the disenfranchisement of all those who didn’t vote because they didn’t see how it would do any good.
I want electoral reform because proportionality does indeed trump non-functional tradition, simplicity, and the value of majority governments as a stabilizing force. I believe it would lead to more accountability, and to more people taking an interest in politics and demanding that accountability. And I’m angry that the politicians in charge of the referendum did not create the kind of climate of public debate where these issues could be properly debated to allow for an informed choice. Once again, our system circumvented real democracy.
Mr. Urquart, in his column, seems to think that the way we elect our representatives is a minor thing, and the real job is to get on with the real work of government. He believes the voters of the province understood the proposed change to the system and rejected it.
The polls do not bear this out. They showed, throughout the campaign, that people really didn’t have a clear idea of what MMP would mean. Politicians didn’t talk about it, or did so in the vaguest of non-partisan terms. The referendum happened in a vacuum, so that voters made up their minds based on incomplete evidence and the opinions of newspaper columnists like himself.
I have a particular bone to pick with Mr. Urquart’s statement that the reformers believe proportionality should trump accountability, tradition, simplicity and stability.
Anyone who believes that MMP would lead to less accountability for representatives hasn’t studied the countries in which it has been running smoothly for decades, like Germany. There, it’s a truism that list seats go primarily to opposition members while riding seats are the purview of the governing party. Translation: if the opposition members elected from lists want to form a government, they have to get a riding seat the next time out. List members and riding members both fight for riding nominations and the votes of individual constituents. That means at least two representatives courting each vote. That doesn’t strike me as a lack of accountability – in fact, it strikes me as better accountability, because you get to see two candidates in action before voting for either of them, it eliminates the incumbent edge, and it maintains the local character of elections.
I don’t see tradition as a good reason to keep things as they are. I’m a firm believer in, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but citing tradition as an argument against MMP is a way of saying, “we know it’s broke, but we’ve always done it this way so we’re not changing.” If the traditional way doesn’t work, it needs to be adjusted. Simplicity is in the same category. Simplicity at the expense of functionality is a bargain with the devil. Let’s go with the simplest system that works. First-past-the-post doesn’t fulfil that requirement.
Which brings us to stability. Stability is a straw man argument, because there’s no good reason why a minority government can’t be stable. Again, the matter of Germany: they get away with reasonable intervals between elections because their politicians work at forming coalitions. But even if you assume that a minority government is by definition less stable, you’re forced to ask the question: what price do we pay for our stable majority governments? And the answer is: the disenfranchisement of the 58% of voters who didn’t vote for the winning party, and the disenfranchisement of all those who didn’t vote because they didn’t see how it would do any good.
I want electoral reform because proportionality does indeed trump non-functional tradition, simplicity, and the value of majority governments as a stabilizing force. I believe it would lead to more accountability, and to more people taking an interest in politics and demanding that accountability. And I’m angry that the politicians in charge of the referendum did not create the kind of climate of public debate where these issues could be properly debated to allow for an informed choice. Once again, our system circumvented real democracy.
