Answering TVO's Battle Blog Question - Voters WIN!

TVO.org's Battle Blog of Sept. 17 asks Who's Afraid of MMP? Who has the most to gain and who has the most to lose if Mixed-Member Proportional representation goes forward?

All the bloggers got it wrong in my books. They saw it in terms of which parties would win and lose. I think its about voters winning. And the anti people are afraid of us. Maybe the NDP and the Green should be afraid of us too, especially if they start thinking that politics is about what's best for them.

My answer - Voters Win.

Voters win
Candidates can win and lose, voters shouldn't.

In the current system, half or more of Ontarions cast votes that didn't elect anyone. So they are represented solely by an MPP they did not vote for. This creates winners and losers in a riding. Someone will say, 'this riding is sooooo Liberal, or soooo Conservative, or NDP,' and when they say it they feel disempowered. They support another party different to what the largest minority does. They skulk around sometimes, not wanting to admit their affiliation. And yet, the riding that is sooooo 'Whatever' - maybe 55% of the people didn't vote 'Whatever'.

Candidates and parties win and lose. Voters are not losers, and every vote should have equal weight. The 3% bar is an exception to that, but it makes sense to make a party work hard enough and get enough broad support to be serious.

MMP gives voters more power. We can turf parties, we can keep their good local representatives at the same time. We can reject bad MPP's, while continuing our support for the party. We can vote together province-wide on the party vote, we don't have to be clumped in arbitrary ridings with our neighbours, god love 'em, who we love but don't have the same politics. We don't have to conform, we don't have mix our loyalties, we don't have to vote for weak candidates to support our party. Every party and candidate will have to work harder for our vote. We'll be forced to pay more attention.

And this is what the NO side is afraid of. They're afraid of US. They don't think we can understand the ballot, they think we'll elect radical parties, they think we'll accept list MPP's that are unaccountable, they think we can't handle representation of who we are. They think we need to be lorded over by false majorities to ensure 'strong government'.

As I read your blogs, I see the problem. Everyone answered in terms of what's better for parties (with an exception or two). This poitical culture we have is in part created by FPTP.

It's time to give power to the people. With MMP, the people win.