MMP and truthiness

I've been planning a blog series for the rest of the campaign. I've sketched out a bunch of ideas but was looking for a way to tie them all together.

Then today, on the train to Toronto, as I was taking a break watching an episode of my favorite satirical news program - it dawned on me!

I'll have to do the series exposing the "truthiness" of the arguments against MMP.

As the American Dialect Society definied it when they named it 2005's "Word of the
Year", truthiness:

refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.

So I look forward to exposing the truthiness of the arguments against MMP over the next three weeks. It should be educational, as I'll provide references and evidence debunking all the wild accusations made against the Citizens' Assembly's recommendation.

As one of my colleagues notes often, if MMP were a person, they could sue the people organizing for the status quo in the referendum for slander. Their arguments either gloss over, or plainly ignore, the best evidence and research on voting systems and electoral behaviour.

And as one of my favorite bloggers noted last week, I've been proud to be associated with an organization and a campaign that "[more than] any non-academic organization ... argue[s] so much from research findings rather than trying to play on raw emotion". Wish I could say that about our truthy opponents - but then again, if they weren't distorting the facts, they'd have to admit that MMP will work just fine for Ontario.

To paraphrase Colbert, opponents of MMP don't trust books. They're all facts, no heart.

And opponents of MMP won't let facts get in the way of defending the status quo.