Proportional representation: Not if, but how, when and what?

March 28, 2012 by jlam

Following the #fairvote hashtag, I spotted a twitter conversation between Melinda Morrissey and David Weber in which Melinda writes:

"It's a system we need,sadly PR is not likely to come out of Ottawa,PR debate has raged for years & nothing has changed."

Fair Vote Pubnight

February 9, 2012 by jlam

Fair Vote is having a pub night on Friday the 10th. Please join us!

Details on the chapter's Meetup.com group:

http://www.meetup.com/fvc-ottawa/events/51689192/

Fair Vote Canada congratulates voting reform supporter Yasir Naqvi

October 7, 2011 by jlam

The National Capital Region chapter of Fair Vote Canada would like to congratulate Yasir Naqvi for winning a second mandate as the provincial representative for Ottawa-Centre. Mr. Naqvi is a signer of the Declaration of Voters Rights and we would encourage his colleagues and supporters to sign it as well at www.fairvote.ca.

A response to the Liberal Party of Ontario standard template response to our questions

October 1, 2011 by jlam

Every Liberal Party of Ontario candidate sent a standard reply to our questions about electoral reform, which was basically "we did our best in 2007". Here is our response to Mr. McNeely:

Bonjour Tim,

Congratulations to Mr. McNeely winning another mandate.

We are thankful for the work the Liberals did on voting reform and we
understand the difficulty in re-introducing an issue that was turned
down by Ontarians.

However, the effort must be called into question. An Environics poll
from June 2007 found that 70% did not know about the proposed reform,

Report from Ottawa-Centre all candidates meeting

September 23, 2011 by jlam

Martin Hyde report back from a Ottawa-Centre all candidates debate. If you have a report back from an ACM of a different riding, please let us know.

Hi, I’m Martin Hyde
My question is in regards to where each of you stand on electoral reform.
In the last federal election the Conservatives won a majority with the support of under 40% of the electorate who voted, and about 25% of the support of the total electorate. Each of you represent good ideas, but only one of you will be able to represent those ideas following this election despite the fact that almost certainly more than 50% of the people in this riding will vote for one of the three or four [there were only four candidates there, but if the Conservative candidate had shown it would have been five] of you who don’t get elected. Given this, can you tell me where each of you stand on electoral reform?

The question received applause.

All were for it.

Interview on CPAC

July 11, 2011 by jlam

(with apologies to my Facebook friends who have already seen this)

I had the pleasure of a TV interview on CPAC. Their studios are located on the 17th floor of the World Exchange Plaza in Ottawa. The interview went very well, better than I expected. I believe it is because I wasn't very concious of the cameras.... and because I talk about this every other day, at the expense of my co-workers and friends. :-)

Modernizing backwards

June 24, 2011 by jlam

The current government has introduced a voluntary method of electing nominees to the Senate. Senate reform is more subject to the constitution then reform of the House of Commons, so I'm not sure how critical we can be of the current government of this initiative being a /voluntary/ framework for electing *nominees*. It is dissapointing however that the election system suggested is First Past the Post, an outdated system invented when people thought the Earth was flat.

Open letter to Hon. Ralph Goodale, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

June 5, 2011 by jlam

Bonjour Mr. Goodale,

I was impressed by your responses to the questions Peter Van Dusen asked you on CPAC. I took notice of how important it is to centre decisions around facts and not ideology.

I would be curious to know your position on electoral reform. The Liberal party as a whole has been very hesitant to support electoral reform. Your party would have had twice the seats under proportional representation. Even more so if we look just at Ontario where your party won 25% of the votes but 10% of the seats.

Lets look at some of the facts:

50,4% of all votes did not elect anyone

May 27, 2011 by jlam

Wastedvotes.ca is reporting that 50,4% of all votes did not go to a winning candidate. Some interesting facts:

- Liberal party supporters had the largest amount of votes wasted with 30,3% of votes wasted, next is the NDP with 29,2%
- Vancouver Centre was the riding with the highest amount of wasted votes with 69% not going to the winning candidate
- 53% of MPs did not get the majority support of their constituents
- Some very interesting distortions if you go down to the province level. For example, in Ontario, Liberals got 25% of the vote, but only 10% of the seats. In Quebec, the Bloc got 23% of the vote but 5% of the seats. In Alberta, the NDP got 17% of the vote but only 4% of the seats.

The voting system does not reflect the political diversity of the regions of Canada. Join the largest organization dedicated to changing the electoral system

Conservative supporters can cheer for this election. Their party has really managed to split the vote in all provinces and are over-represented everywhere. But any CPC supporter thinking about this long term will realize it won't last forever. Kim Campbell got 2 seats with 16% and the majority government with the lowest amount of support was Chrétien Liberal government with 38% of the vote in 1997. Its not going to last forever and any Canadian voter who wants an accountable government would want to stop the wasting of votes. How can MPs be held accountable with so many wasted votes? Conservative Senator Hugh Segal and former president of the Canadian Tax Payers Federation Walter Robinson know better: they support fairvote.ca