Less than a week after her party’s re-election, Premier Kathy Dunderdale informed voters that the House of Assembly would not be re-opening until the Spring, in part because she deems it dysfunctional, and as she told the CBC’s David Cochrane:”We need …
Continue readingTag: Electoral Reform
Scott's DiaTribes: Ontario election aftermath & is it time for mandatory voting?
It was a fascinating result last night in Ontario (I say that as someone interested in political science, not as a Liberal partisan). It’s not often in a First-Past-The-Post electoral system that you see a party fall exactly 1 seat short of a majority, but that’s what happened in the case of Dalton McGuinty and The Ontario Liberal Party. Late polls indicating a majority never materialized, or the PC party again had more dedicated partisans coming out to vote. That said, the Liberals were way behind in polls 2-3 months ago, so a win, even if it fell short of a majority, has to be a satisfying outcome for […]
Continue readingThey Call Me "Mr. Sinister": Screwed Up System Almost Screws Ontarians
Well we seem to have dodged a bullet, but just barely. The first past the post system did its usual magic and almost produced a majority of seats with less than 38% of the vote. In fact, thanks to the magic of splits, the Liberals with 2% more of the p…
Continue readingThey Call Me "Mr. Sinister": Another Victim Of FPTP
From the coverage of the Manitoba election:McFadyen added that his party was the victim of a cruel numbers game under the first-past-the post election system.”Under any other circumstance we would be happy with 45 per cent of the popular vote,” he said…
Continue readingThe Happy Wanderer: Quebec Desreves Everything?
The NDP Brian Topp a man who is running to lead the NDP is proposing that the province of Quebec be given 25% of the seats of the house of commons no matter what happens. Not even considering of course that Quebec today doesn’t even deserve 25% of the …
Continue readingPop The Stack: Happy Democracy Day, Canada! Or Is it?
Happy Democracy Day Canada! Wait, what? That’s not even…huh? That’s right, Sept. 15 is the International Day of Democracy. The fourth annual! Apparently. I know, I hadn’t heard of it either. I only heard about it because Fair Vote Canada is holding events all week discussing democracy. So, for my first
Continue readingPop The Stack: Happy Democracy Day, Canada! Or Is it?
Happy Democracy Day Canada! Wait, what? That’s not even…huh? That’s right, Sept. 15 is the International Day of Democracy. The fourth annual! Apparently. I know, I hadn’t heard of it either. I only heard about it because Fair Vote Canada is holding events all week discussing democracy. So, for my first
Continue readingDemocracy week Sept 12-18
The United Nations has declared September 15th the International Day of Democracy. Fair Vote Canada is expanding the day to Democracy Week, September 12th to the 18th. The week, according to Fair Vote’s website, is all about “participating, celebrating…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: On missing the point
Mark Watton has been leading the charge against sections of the province’s election laws that allow people to vote when there is no election. On the face of it, the idea is bizarre. You’d think it is obviously bizarre. And yet a political scienc…
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, September 5, 2011
Spending Labour Day with Imtiaz Popat on “The Rational” on Vancouver’s COOP Radio, talking about Christy Clark’s revocation of a pre-2013 election date [coup, not really a premier, perhaps a “notional premier”], the end of the HST, the BCTF negotiations and how the courts noted how the government yanked almost $3 billion from BC’s K-12 […]
Continue readingMorning Show addendum
Our political panel on the CBC Morning Show was a bit of fun. Thanks to former Premier Tom Rideout and Dr. Holly Pike for putting up with me and, of course, our host and moderator Bernice Hillier. (I’ll link to the podcast version when available)About …
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Realigning Canada’s Political Spectrum
Canadians have traditionally held social democratic values while supporting centrist political parties. Canadians support universal single payer public health insurance, public pensions and a social safety net, all of which, at the federal level, have …
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Compounding the abuse #nlpoli
It wasn’t bad enough that the province’s special ballot laws make a mockery of democracy. For the 2011 general election, the province’s elections office is opening 12 special offices across the province in addition to the existing 48 electoral d…
Continue readingThe Happy Wanderer: National Popular Vote
We all know that the current electoral system is broke in the U.S . In 2000 Al Gore won the Popular vote and he still lost the election. 2000 wasn’t the only time if you continue to look back in history 1 in 14 times the winner of the national vote los…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Nurturing a democratic revolution
Public life in Newfoundland and Labrador remains as fundamentally undemocratic as it ever was. Paternalism remains the order of the day. As three sitting members of the House revealed, they they are the face of government in their districts.…
Continue readingWhy we should not hold a referendum on proportional representation
It seems that every time the subject of changing the voting system comes up, we automatically assume that a change must be sanctioned by a referendum. I increasingly feel this is a mistake.We have experienced three referendums on the voting system in t…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Just wondering…
…but can anybody else remember a case of proportional representation being used as a boogeyman outside of an actual electoral reform referendum?I ask only because Peter MacKay’s plea to keep the Cons’ party constitution as is seems to go way over the…
Continue readingStephen Harper and the Canada Elections Act
11 years ago today, Stephen Harper filed a Statement of Claim with the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta, demanding that numerous provisions of the Canada Elections Act which related to spending restrictions on third party advertising be declared uncon…
Continue readingGrounds
Me on Twitter, May 28, 2011 (limited to 140 characters):It appears that smarter people than me seem to agree:Here’s University of Ottawa Professor Errol Mendes, cited in a Toronto Star article three days later about party financing (emphasis added):Yet…
Continue readingWeekend update(s)
Some different stuff, starting this weekend.(a) I just gave blog contributor status to my better half, Ruth. This could end very badly. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. A partial explanation appears in (b) below…(b) We’re off to New Yo…
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