MMP and environmentalism

I came across a blog post that I just had to respond to.

Let's file it under ridiculous claims about MMP.

I'll expand my comment on his site a little bit on mine. Apparently, "both sides of the issue have legitimate points, and this blog is not the place to debate them (please)", so I wouldn't flood him with comments, but if you're as confused about his post as me, I'm sure the Ottawa regional director for the NO MMP campaign is a democrat so that he wouldn't mind a little polite discussion on the relationship between environmentalism and electoral reform. (Also, note in his post the smelly red herring of the Scottish "voter confusion" that's now become a favorite of democracy's opponents).

As I point out more succinctly on his blog, the evidence is crystal clear that MMP would be GOOD for the environment.

In Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy, the respected political scientist and renowned expert in comparative government, looks into the question of the relationship between political systems and environmental policies.

The book looks at 36 democracies and compares them in multiple ways since the end of World War II. It's really an amazing book - all 310 pages of groundbreaking empirical research. He makes a convincing case that we can break parliamentary government into two broad families that share many characteristics due to the electoral system: majoritarian and consensus democracies.

I think we can all agree that by far the best way to compare outcomes of given political systems is to compare them in broad, extensive cross-national comparisons. Lijphart's book is undoubtedly one of the best and more extensive. The guy didn't get to be President of the American Political Science Association and a professor emeritus for nothing.

His conclusions on environmental policies? Consensus democracies have lower carbon dioxide emissions, fertilizer consumption, deforestation and higher energy efficiency.

Maybe on Mars our outdated voting system is good for the environment, but on Earth if looks like proportional systems like MMP are where it's at.

So if you want environmental policies that deliver results, the choice in the October 10 is clear, you need to vote for MMP.

Seems we can file this claim as another falsehood being propagated by NO MMP.

I look forward to addressing more of them as the campaign unfolds.

Source: Lijphart,Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy, 1-8 and 295-7

Fancy new Vote for MMP ads for your blog/website

Likely won't be back to blogging regularly until after Labour Day. I'm working on a series of blog pieces for the referendum campaign, so I'm planning to have some good discussion here and on the campaign site.

But in the meantime, I wanted to let people know that we've got some neat Vote for MMP banners up on the site. If you support MMP, we'd love you to put one on your blog or web site!

MPP cares more about his vote than yours

Over the weekend, I read an article that I wanted to come back and blog about from the Owen-Sound Sun Times, on the local candidates’ positions on MMP.

The three challengers all came out strongly in favor of MMP and while PC incumbent Bill Murdoch “spoke critically” (in the words of the reporter) of the Citizens’ Assembly’s recommendation, he wouldn’t come out and say he’s voting against it (hopefully a sign that he detects an undercurrent of support for change in his riding).

But there’s one thing in particular that jumped out at me. Murdoch, like some others opposing MMP, argues that electoral reform might be a good idea, but that we should instead be concentrating on parliamentary reform, specifically loosening the party whip and allowing for more free votes.

“The parties take over and tell the members what to do,” said Murdoch. “I believe if they wanted it to be more democratic in Ontario, they should have changed the system at Queen’s Park first.”

On October 10, we’re not voting on whether we want parliamentary reform. In fact, I can’t even imagine ever having a referendum on that issue. Clearly, the issue of “free votes” is one that can be decided right now within the walls of Queen’s Park. MPPs don’t have to vote any particular way. Sure, if they vote against party leadership they might lose some perks, put themselves out of favour with the leadership, but surely representing their constituents is worth that.

If MPPs from any party wanted to rise up tomorrow and cast off the shackles of the party whip, they could do it, no need for any legislation, any regulations. Are their party leaders going kick them all out of caucus? I don’t think so.

Murdoch says the current system doesn’t let you represent your constituents because of the party whip system, so how could MMP be worse?

Oh yes, the dreaded list MPPs, according to Murdoch, they are “as undemocratic as you could get. You’re supposed to be elected to represent your people, not a party. The way it’s set up right now, those 39 are going to be beholden to the party because how did they get their name on the list?”

But wait I thought MPPs were already beholden to their parties and couldn't propoerly represent "their people" under the current system?

And is Murdoch saying that John Tory would just pick and choose list candidates among his favorite backroom cronies? I think if he were so foolish, he’d surely find himself on the opposition benches.

And would MPPs under MMP be less able to vote against the party line? There’s no reason why they still couldn’t. In particular, I think MPPs elected locally under a hypothetical MMP system would be more able to buck party discipline if the issue was sufficiently important to their local area. After all, if they were to get kicked out of their caucus, they would still be able to run as an independent in their seat. Their supporters could still vote for their local MPP who represents their interest AND for a different party. And to see how independent members can have success under MMP just look at the independent Welsh Assembly Members who were just elected after leaving the Labour Party over its controversial affirmative action policies for female candidates.

Considering Murdoch’s position, it seems to me that the clear conclusion is that he cares much more about his votes than ours. Or he’s just looking for a smelly red herring to distract voters from how MMP will improve our democracy.

All of this isn’t to say that I’m not amenable to parliamentary reform – and in my experience most supporters of electoral reform are – but, in my view, Murdoch’s arguments are no reason to pass up this historic opportunity to modernize our democratic institutions.

On the other hand, if we want to change our voting system, we may very well only have one chance – voting for MMP. It’s taken centuries for Ontario’s citizens to get the chance to pass judgment on how we vote, so should MMP fail, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for another chance to make our votes more effective in shaping our parliament.

Vote for Alex Campbell, Defeat Wacky Bennett!

I'm taking a second away from improving democracy to direct your attention to another important democratic matter - Calgary Grit's Canada's Best Premier contest.

The winner of the PEIs best premier contest that I hosted, Alex Campbell is facing off in the quarter-finals versus reactionary BC premier "Wacky Bennett".

While Campbell was a Liberal, he is undoubtedly the Garden Province's most lefty premier. He brought a traditionalist province (at times reluctantly) into the modern world. His accomplishments in changing PEI for the better are unrivalled.

If you've got 10 minutes to spare and want to know more about Campbell, check out this fascinating old CBC piece on the remarkably close election that put him in the Premier's chair.

And I'm sure there must be lots of progressive bloggers out there who don't want to see a premier who was taken to calling the NDP "socialist hordes" who "couldn't run a peanut stand" beat a progressive Premier. So vote here for Alex Campbell.

$10.10 for more democracy on 10/10

Inspired by the increasing chatter in the blogosphere about MMP, I felt I should chime in to remind people that democracy does come for free.

The Vote for MMP campaign is a grassroots, largely volunteer based campaign and is supported by small donations from supporters of democracy - like my readers.

If we are going to win the campaign for better democracy in Ontario, we're going to need the resources to counter the spin and misinformation and reach out to the 70% of Ontarians who don't know about the referendum.

That's why I'm calling on all my readers who are fed up with politics-as-usual to dig into their pockets and make a small donation to the Vote for MMP campaign. Like I just did, you can take a minute and donate online to the campaign right here.

I'd suggest $10.10 in recognition of the October 10 date where we will make history be being the first province in Canada to replace our 13th Century voting system with one that will better allow us to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.

But if you want to give more, I'm cool with that too!

Democracy's foes reveal themselves

Came to work at Democracy Central this afternoon to find that the group who will be campaigning against the multi-partisan, independent and representative Citizens' Assembly's recommendation for a mixed-member proportional voting system for Ontario have revealed themselves.

Not surprisingly, it was with a press release cross-posted to Jason Cherniak's blog (who I did get the pleasure to meet briefly this past weekend and seems like a nice guy).

My friend and leading pro-democracy blogger Scott Tribe responded with a blistering and accurate attack on the flimsy logic of the No MMP campaign.

The discussion in the comments on those blogs is interesting and should be reflective of how the campaign will develop should the No MMP forces continue to try and peddle misrepresentations and half-truths as their stock in trade.

I'm sure we'll be pointing out the glaring holes in the case against MMP in the weeks to come but I want to concentrate briefly on one point in the release to refute it.

No MMP warns the proposed voting system "will allow political leaders to stack their caucuses with blind loyalists who have no direct responsibility to the people." Let's consider this scenario of the 2011 election under MMP.

As proposed by the Citizens' Assembly, parties are required to publicly release their candidate lists - and how they were chosen - before the writ is dropped. Obviously, on the day list must be made public, the media will be ALL over that story. They'll talk about the list order, break down the regional and demographic representativeness of the list and let voters know how the list was chosen. Do you think a party would risk all the negative publicity that would come from having to admit that the list was selected by the leader in a smoky backroom? Not if they want to win the election. Because they know that the other parties would be criticizing them like crazy if they did that.

Also, the 3% threshold for winning seats under MMP provides a strong incentive for parties to be fair and transparent with their members when it comes to list selection. After all, if a party were to choose its candidates in an undemocratic way, it would be easy for an enterprising party activist to quickly start their own party, with fair and democratic candidate selection processes, and directly compete with their former party for votes based upon their more democratic nature. Heck, they might even be able to call it the Democratic Liberal/PC/NDP/Green party!

So as you're hopefully starting to see, all this talk about list MPPs is not based in reality but is just an attempt to scare voters away from a new and improved voting system.

And this isn't even starting to criticize the problems with undemocratic candidate selection under our current voting system, as this blogger points out.