[fvc-wat-disc] Re: appeal to traditionalists

[Rick Fairman]

Hello All
I am about to submit this letter to The Record.  Before doing so I would 
like to submit it to your collective scrutiny for potential improvement 
and/or correction.  Its aim is to persuade traditionalists.  Did I forget 
any important points etc.?  Thanks.  Peace.    Rick.





Those against the proposed change in our electoral system because it would 
overthrow 200 years of tradition, would do well to review history.  Is this 
tradition truly worth keeping?

Our current electoral system has not served us well:  It renders voters 
unequal by virtually disenfranchising one out of two people who bother to 
vote.  It effectively dissuades and alienates many voters who don't see any 
point in voting since their vote rarely, if ever, translates into 
representation.  Of those who do bother, many resort to strategically voting 
for the lesser of evils rather than the choice of their conscience.  
Moreover, our system distorts election results by allotting disproportional 
representation to all parties, and some parties with substantial voter 
support no representation at all.  It makes false majority governments of 
parties with a minority of voter support.

If the objective were to uphold 200 years of tradition, why then today are 
women allowed to vote?  Why are not citizens allowed to hold others as 
slaves and personal property?

Today, women can vote and slavery is abolished because some of our forebears 
recognized the injustice of those institutions and bid to have them 
overthrown.  Just, as today, many recognize the injustices of an institution 
from the same era: our current first-past-the-post electoral system.  Many, 
likewise, are moved by a moral imperative to correct it.

This is the objective of the Ontario Citizens Assembly and the electoral 
reform campaign: that we progress to a new era of truer democracy through 
proportional representation.  In the election/referendum of October 10, vote 
for Mixed Member Proportional.  It's long overdue.

Richard Fairman
Kitchener