[fvc-wat-disc] Conservative riding nomination

[Paul Nijjar]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Rick Fairman wrote:

> With the exception of Kim Campbell's PC's in 1995 (or thereabouts) federally, 
> I don't know of any other examples when FPTP was not advantageous to the Libs 
> or the Cons (perhaps in B.C.?).  It seems to me, it serves their electoral 
> interests rather well--- giving them more than they deserve almost always.  I 
> am very interested to know why you say that FPTP does not serve them well.

 	I have been thinking about this quite a bit over the past little 
while. Here are a few examples (without numbers to back them up, although 
others should feel free to pitch in):

 	- Both the federal and provincial governments are starting to 
understand that people are losing faith in their democracy, which is why 
they both have instituted portfolios for "Democratic Renewal". I wonder 
whether such portfolios are mostly lip-service, but they at least 
acknowledge the disaffection many voters -- including Liberals and 
Conservatives -- feel about their democracies.

 	- Just because Liberals and Conservatives usually win elections 
does not mean that they don't get squished when they don't get into power. 
McGuinty felt this when Mike Harris got elected for the second time -- 
people worked hard to kick Harris out of power, but thanks to our voting 
system Harris got another phony majority.

 	- The Conservatives have problems winning federal seats in 
Ontario, and in urban ridings. There are lots of people in Toronto who 
like the Conservatives, but their votes are wasted because more of their 
neighbours vote Liberal. (FVC has numbers on this phenomenon.)

 	- The Liberals have traditionally had problems winning provincial 
seats in Ontario for much the same reason. There was a long string of 
Conservative governments that did not come to an end until the David 
Peterson-Bob Rae coalition of the mid 1980s.

 	- Federally, the right has been trying to deal with the unfairness 
of the voting system ever since Kim Campbell's big loss (which was 
actually 1993). The Reform Party and the PCs kept splitting the vote, and 
the Liberals kept winning elections by going up the middle.
 	The right has tried to address this issue with its "Unite the 
Right" campaign. To some degree it worked -- there is one right wing party 
federally and it formed the government. But it's not a very stable 
solution -- different factions who call themselves conservative have very 
different views on social issues -- and Derek says that the new 
Conservative Party received less of the vote than the combined vote of the 
old Reform and Progressive Conservative parties before "Unite the Right".

 	- One of the things that both Liberals and Conservatives value is 
the market. One of the big reasons markets work over centralized command 
economies is because markets make use of information better. Everybody is 
allowed to pursue their own interests according to their local conditions.
 	Our voting system throws away HALF the votes that are cast, in the 
sense that about half the votes do not contribute to electing political 
representation. Why do we think that throwing away all of that information 
is a better way to run a government than making use of it by remembering 
it across ridings?

 	- There's one argument that I think people in the Liberal and 
Conservative parties may not appreciate, but that they maybe should: 
competition between parties gives us more responsive governments. MMP 
gives us two layers of opposition for the ruling (i.e. major coalition) 
party: one in the form of the official opposition (which is the case now) 
and another layer in the form of junior coalition partners, who have 
incentives to prevent the ruling party from going too off track.

 	- Finally, voting systems where more people's votes count are 
*more democractic* than systems where half the votes are thrown away. That 
is an issue for people of all parties who actually believe in the concept 
of democracy, which I would hope includes many people who vote for 
big-tent parties. So many defences of FPTP smack of elitism -- that the 
people cannot be trusted to have more than two choices in their elections.
I am not articulating this point very well, but I feel it pretty strongly, 
and I think that many people who vote for big-tent parties share this 
populist sentiment. (People who oppose MMP often do so by trying to play 
on this sentiment, which is why they try to say that the list MPPs under 
MMP are "unelected", ignoring the way that candidates are nominated and 
the way that people vote for governments now.)

- Paul

--
Paul Nijjar - http://www.fairvotecanada.org/WaterlooRegion
Next electoral reform info night: Tuesday June 12, 7pm