Referendum campaign kicks off, Star misleads readers

Today marks the start of the Ontario election campaign. But more importantly, it also marks the start of a historic referendum campaign to modernize Ontario democracy.

So it was not particularly surprising to see that the Toronto Star put a story about the referendum on their cover this morning, with the oh-so-clever title of “Electoral reform on the ballot? Who knew?”.

As my good friends at Liberals for MMP already note in this post, there is a serious factual error in the Star's story:

reporter Kerry Gillespie makes the error in the piece that "39 [MPPs] would be appointed from party lists" under Mixed Member Proportional. This is factually incorrect as the 39 province-wide members will be elected by the public when they cast their ballots for political parties under the new system. The 39 province-wide nominees will be put before voters in a clear and transparent way ... To refer to them simply as "appointed" is simply wrong.

Consider the 2003 election. It took, on average, 21,993 votes to elect a local MPP. In 2003, 4,309,912 votes were cast -- which under MMP will all count toward electing representatives if cast for a party that got more than 3%. So if we divide that number by the 129 MPPs who will be elected under MMP, on average it will take 33,410 votes to elect a list MPP. Therefore, since it takes nearly 50% more votes to elect a list MPP, how can it be said they are not elected?

So if you're like me and shocked at the Star's error and that their reporter was out on the street telling voters that parties will “appoint” MPPs under the proposed system, send a note to the reporter or their ombudsperson urging them to stop misreporting details of the proposed new system are encouraged to do so.

Maybe then the Star will be make the appropriate correction in tomorrow’s issue and refrain in the future from misleading their readers about MMP.