Truthiness about MMP and "fringe" parties

Another favorite canard of the defenders of the electoral status quo is that proportional representation, like MMP, will hand our government over to "fringe parties" and extremists who will bring in government policies that most voters abhor.

As the Toronto Star wrote in an editorial that will hopefully become infamous:

Routinely, whoever heads the leading party is forced to cater to the demands of small, sometimes radical special-interest parties that enjoy no wide support, just to stay in power. That in itself is a distortion of the voters' will.

Except well, there's NO evidence to show that situation has happened anywhere in the world under a PR system. In fact, I've been all over the internet for months now asking people who make those kind of statements to back them up with concrete examples. But for some reason, they never provide them?

But the media elites and opponents of fair elections won't let silly little things like reality getting in the way of their campaign to defeat MMP.

Under proportional systems, even when smaller parties enter into government they never get to enact their unpopular policies. Why? It’s simple when you think about it. All parties in a coalition government will be held to account for their policies, so why would larger parties risk losing support by bringing in “extreme” and unpopular positions?

They wouldn’t and, if people looked at the evidence, they don’t.

Don't take my word for it. Here's what Campaign Life Coalition - "a Canadian national pro-life organization" and "one of the first pro-life organizations to emphasize the international dimension of attacks on life and family" - has to say about MMP, in a piece entitled "We Oppose Proportional Representation":

"We understand that there is great disillusionment with the current political situation and frustration with the lack of progress on moral issues in the political arena. CLC appreciates that many people are looking to electoral reform as an answer to these issues ...

Some pro-lifers believe that proportional representation will result in the appointment of Family Coalition Party members at the provincial level and Christian Heritage Party candidates at the federal level ...

There are very few examples of social conservative legislation being passed in countries with PR. This summer The Interim newspaper had a team of three people examine the records of other countries to track the progress of prolife and pro-family legislation in countries with PR. They found just one significant example. In the Netherlands, the Christian Union Party, as part of the coalition government there, has effected some positive change in closing down brothels, reducing the number of marijuana shops and introducing guidelines requiring cooling off wait times for abortions.

But, for the most part, the researchers at The Interim found the reverse to be true: many countries with PR have experienced an advance of anti-life and anti-family agendas in recent years"

In fact, evidence shows that citizens in PR countries, like MMP, are more satisfied with government and feel better represented.

The cross-national comparisons show that citizens in countries using PR are significantly more satisfied than those in countries using systems like ours.

In another measure of voter satisfaction, it has been demonstrated that in PR countries the difference in voter satisfaction between winners of the election (those who voted for parties in government) and losers (those who voted for parties not in government) is significantly SMALLER in countries with PR systems.

Finally, two different studies, using data from the late 70s to mid 80s, shows that governments in PR countries are more like be closer to the median voter, as measured on a left-right scale.

Does that sound like what you'd find from countries where "the voters' will is distorted" and are ruled by "fringe" or "extremist" elements? Didn't think so, looks like we've found more truthiness about MMP!