NOW the Cons care about meeting international treaty obligations

I just had to pop back in to comment on the new Copyright law, Bill C-61, as I can see myself blogging about it regularly as it grinds its way through the legislative process. Yes, Jim Prentice is right that the new law will bring Canada into compliance with the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) treaty signed by the previous Liberal government over a decade ago.

Can any remember another international treaty, signed by the Liberal government about a decade ago, that the Tories have had no compunctions about breaking or even really trying to meet its goals?

Hint - it has the same name as Stephane Dion's dog.

And I think everyone, on all points of the political spectrum, can agree that climate change is more important an issue than internet piracy.

This C-61 is many things, but it's probably most frustrating as a gross misuse of the time and attention of our legislators, who should be solving, you know, problems that actually negatively impact Canadians, not multinational media conglomerates.

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!

Truthiness about MMP and diversity

I did a panel debate at UTM yesterday and after hearing some pretty weak arguments from the defender of the status quo concerning how MMP might affect diversity in the legislature, I knew I had to do a piece about the truthiness of his assertions.

One of the big arguments the forces for democracy have been making is that MMP would increase the representation of women and minority communities at Queen's Park.

Here’s what they say about this question on their website.

QUESTION

Will MMP allow for more women and minorities to be elected?

ANSWER

That is entirely up to the political parties. If political parties do not want to field more women or minority candidates, they are not compelled to do so. There is no guarantee that political parties will put more women or minority candidates on their party lists.

As it stands now, the Liberal Party of Ontario have promised to have women make up 1/3 of their candidate slate, and the Ontario NDP have managed to have women make up 50% of their candidate list for the upcoming election. MMP will not make political parties step up their efforts in this area.

Now, the above quote is technically correct. There is nothing in the proposed MMP system that compels political parties to nominate more women. But is it a reasonable assertion that MMP would not affect female or visible minority representation at Queen’s Park?

Not in the least.

But first, let’s look at how MMP has actually affected minority representation in MMP countries.

It is clear that proportional representation systems, like MMP, elect more women. Of the twenty democracies with the most women elected, they all have proportional voting system. The main western democracies using MMP – Germany, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales – all have at least 50 per cent more women in their parliaments.

Also, the MMP experience in New Zealand provides strong support for arguments that MMP would improve legislative representation for other minority groups. Here's a graphic showing the representation of minorities in the New Zealand House of Representatives, pre- and post-MMP (note that 1996 was the first MMP election in NZ):



As we can clearly see, after adopting MMP, New Zealand saw a dramatic increase in the representation of women, aboriginals and other minority groups. In fact, the number of Maori elected is now greater than their share of the population!

How did this occur? Because parties in New Zealand democratically selected candidate lists that were more reflective of the population than they had when they only selected single candidates in single districts.

Recent polling has shown that between 80 and 90 per cent of Ontario voters would like to see more women elected. Would any party risk alienating this large majority of voters by failing to nominate plenty of female list candidates? Not if they wanted to win the election.

The same goes for candidates from other under-represented groups, like visible minorities, youth and the disabled. The list of at-large candidates will be carefully parsed by the media and interest groups. While parties might be able hide their continued under-representation of their groups in the halls of power under the current system, it is highly likely they would continue to do so under the current system.

This is why it is certain that MMP, or any other proportional voting system that uses multi-member districts, will increase women’s – and other under-represented groups’ – representation at Queen’s Park.

This is why women groups like Equal Voice, the national movement to improve women’s representation in elected office, and several multi-cultural groups have endorsed MMP.

Finally, in the quote above, the enemies of democracy, assert that the increased nomination of women by the Liberals and NDP will increased the number of women elected. Sadly, the logic of the current voting system does not allow this – and I expect those writing that know that full well.

Under first-past-the-post, over half the seats in the province are “safe” – that is, barring massive vote swings, they will be won by one party. Indeed, there are parts of the province that have only been represented by one party for generations. So for women’s representation, what matters less is the number of female candidates, but rather where they are located in the province.

For example, the provincial Liberals have nominated women in more than half of the ridings where incumbents are not running. This is a positive sign, but as the Liberals are unlikely to gain many seats, their proportion of female MPPs is not likely to rise appreciably. The same goes for federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s commitment to running 1/3 women candidates. Again, a good principle, but will likely not lead to more women elected if they run mostly in Alberta, the Prairies and Quebec, places where the party is unlikely to make gains.

The evidence is clear, if we’re concerned about having legislatures that better reflect our diversity – and I think we should be – than we need proportional representation. And clearly the best way to get PR is to vote for MMP tomorrow.

No wonder the opponents of democratic improvement feel the need to misinform voters on this.

Truthiness about the Citizens’ Assembly

I haven't been able to put as much time as I've wanted to on my series about the "truthiness" of the defenders of the electoral status quo. But I've started a few and I promise to squeeze out a few more between now and referendum day. First is a piece about the truthiness being spread about the heroes of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

There are many things that are frustrating about the campaign to preserve the electoral status quo, but one of the most frustrating is how they have ignored, suppressed and distorted how the Assembly brought us to this historic referendum.

Its ultimate success remains to be seen, but it is clear that the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly can be seen as an innovative experiment in making the ideas of deliberative democracy a reality.

The Citizens’ Assembly – promised by the McGuinty government in the 2003 election – was based on a similar experiment in British Columbia and built on that experience. It is premised on the idea that average citizens can come together to make good decisions on various policy issues. In particular, it is seen as a particularly good method for studying electoral reform as politicians face a fundamental conflict of interest when it comes to evaluating the system that elects them.

Jonathan Rose, Queen’s political scientist and academic director of the Assembly, told the Kingston Whig Standard why he wanted to be a part of the process:

Rose became involved in the process because, he said, political scientists always talk about the capacity of citizens to reason, but no one has ever had this opportunity in the province.

The assembly "really put it to the test," he said. "Are citizens able to learn about complex political issues? And they can."

The members of the Assembly spent months learning about electoral systems, consulting with Ontarians and deliberating on the question of which electoral system who best meet Ontario's democratic aspirations for the next century. I wouldn't go so far as to say voters should reflexively support their recommendation, but I think we owe it to them to inform ourselves about how and why they chose MMP. Thankfully, their original website is still up and has an overwhelming amount of publicly accessible material. All in all, the Assembly is a model of open and transparent public policy making.

Throughout the process, the Assembly contracted the respected Institute on Governance think tank to evaluate their work. Here's what they had to say about the Assembly in their evaluation report, which is available online here in PDF:

The whole Assembly process was undertaken in an open and transparent manner and is well documented for the benefit of future exercises of a similar nature. It serves as a model of how to engage and empower citizens to deliberate and decide on selected public policy questions

Most disturbingly, the opponents of MMP are trying to mislead Ontarians on the topic of the Citizens’ Assembly, likely because they (logically) think that the more voters know about the Assembly and its work, the more likely they are to support its recommendation.

Either the opponents of MMP are completely ignorant of their work (which is kind of disturbing to see from people arguing against their recommendation) or they are choosing not to fairly present it to voters. Here are some of the falsehoods they're spreading about the Citizens' Assembly.


TRUTHINESS - the Citizens assembly was "appointed"

Here are some distortions from an email the opponents of democracy are sending out across the province:

“The government spent millions of our dollars on a Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform. Purportedly, the members of the Citizens Assembly were chosen randomly but no one can establish which database or what information was used to determine such random participation, or history making participants.”

Actually, we do know how the Assembly was chosen and that information could be easily found out by anyone with decent research skills. As the Assembly process was marked by transparency, all their learning material and the results of their consultation phase are still available online here.

TRUTHINESS - ”The people of Ontario did not ask for this referendum.”

Actually, the Citizens’ Assembly was promised by the Liberal government in the last election. Are MMP opponents encouraging governments to break their promises – or just the ones they disagree with? That doesn’t seem like democracy to me.

Rose describes how the group was selected very well in this quote from a recent speech he gave in Kingston:

Formed in spring 2006, the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform was made up of 103 citizens, one from each riding in the province, plus a chair - Kingston's own George Thomson, who is a retired judge and former deputy minister. Half of the assembly was men and half women, and it had at least one aboriginal. Most importantly, the Citizens' Assembly was independent of government. It was given the task of assessing our electoral system and others in use around the world. After a thorough analysis, it had to recommend whether Ontario should keep its current system or adopt another one. If it did recommend change, it had to provide design details about what that system should look like.

Members were randomly selected last spring in a process run by Elections Ontario, which sent out 124,000 letters asking voters if they wanted to be part of the assembly. From the 10,000 who replied, 1,000 voters were invited to attend selection meetings across the province where 103 assembly members were randomly selected by drawing a name out of a box. At these meetings, the feeling of excitement at being picked was palpable. More than one member who was chosen was heard to say that it felt like winning a lottery. But why? This was for the chance to devote two weekends a month from September to May to discussing a subject that many had not thought about; to work on a project that would have no immediate benefit to them except the opportunity to talk to and learn from their fellow citizens. So rare in a democracy is this form of policy-making. In fact, other than in British Columbia, there has never been a citizens' assembly. It says a lot that the opportunities are rare for citizens to be part of a meaningful public conversation on an important matter.
The assembly was diverse in terms of age, occupation, education, country of origin and political beliefs. Members spoke a total of 28 languages, while 66 were born in Ontario, 27 were born outside of Canada and 11 were from other provinces. This great diversity meant that there were many perspectives and experiences from which the group could draw. It was remarkable that people who had nothing in common could work so effectively together in developing a proposal. Author James Surowieki describes this as the "wisdom of crowds."

It is the first citizens' assembly for Ontario and the second time in Canada that this innovative model of policy-making has been attempted. The rationale for letting citizens make this decision was simple: politicians are elected to make policy decisions but have a conflict of interest when it comes to choosing what system should be used to elect them. To paraphrase a British MP, "Asking politicians to vote for an electoral system is a little like asking turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving." An electoral system - how votes are translated into seats - is so fundamental to democracy that it should reflect the preferences of citizens, not those whose interests it could benefit.

TRUTHINESS - the mandate of the Citizens’ Assembly pointed them in a particular direction

Other status quo lovers are baselessly charging that the Assembly was tricked or mandated into “strengthening political parties” by the terms of their mandate. Even smart and politically saavy folks like sponsorship scandal whistleblower Allan Cutler, who wrongly comments on Rick Anderson’s blog that “the Citizens Assembly did an admirable job given that they were given a mandate that was to increase the power of the party system.”

Here’s the actual principle from the mandate given to the Assembly from the legislative committee that directed their work.

Effective Parties - the system supports strong parties that can offer different perspectives.

Clearly, this says NOTHING about “strengthening” political parties. It calls for effective political parties, which is very different – and very reasonable – consideration in designing an electoral system. Even the most cynical observer of politics has to recognize that no jurisdiction as large or as populous as Ontario functions without political parties. All the Assembly was asked to do was to consider how their decision would affect political parties.

And if the political parties are given so much more power under MMP, how come they aren’t openly campaigning for it? Or are they more concerned about it because MMP makes parties more accountable to voters by giving them a vote that counts?

TRUTHINESS - the Citizens’ Assembly was a “biased” body

Another outright fabrication from the naysayers:

As for the assembly, you have a selection bias problem with the Citizen's Assembly, which is overwhelmingly stocked with zombies from Fairvote, whose preformed opinions have been reinforced with more conversations with other such zombies. The Citizen's Assembly is a lobby group.

As noted above, Assembly members were randomly selected by Elections Ontario. None of them were Fair Vote members. Although I'm sure some of them are more interested in getting involved with the multi-partisan movement for electoral reform now that they've seen how the media and entrenched interests have distorted and misrepresented their hard work.

Also, I've heard it charged that the Assembly's learning phase pointed them towards reform or MMP specifically. If that was the case, it wasn't evident to the Assembly members themselves. As part of the independent evaluation of the Assembly, the members rated the neutrality of the secretariat and the facilitators 4.6 out of 5.


Conclusion

As noted above, the Citizens’ Assembly was randomly selected. But this created a decision-making body far more representative of Ontario than the current legislative assembly.

Here are some statistics from the Assembly's extensive background report - of course, available online here - and summarized here.

Gender

52 women and 52 men (including the chair who was a man).

Currently, there are only 26 female MPPs at Queen's Park.

Age

18 to 24: 11 25 to 39: 23 40 to 54: 32 55 to 70: 26 70+: 12

Currently, there is only ONE MPP under the age of 40.

Place of birth

Ontario: 66 Other provinces: 11 Outside Canada: 27 (Citizens' Assembly members were born in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Croatia, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, Iraq, Korea, Malta, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Serbia, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States).

There are currently only 18 immigrant MPPs and 8 visible minority MPPs.

Language

The Assembly members spoke a combined total of 28 languages: English, French, Arabic, Aramaic, Bengali, Cantonese, Dutch, Fanti, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Ibo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Ukrainian, and Urdu.

I'd bet that with only 18 immigrant MPPs and 8 visible minority MPPs, our provincial legislators are less multi-lingual than the mosaic of the Citizens' Assembly.

As you can see, the Assembly is clearly more representative of Ontario's diversity than Queen's Park. I think this gives their deliberations an added legitimacy.

When Ontarians head to the polls and get their referendum ballots, they face a crucial choice about the future of our democracy.

They can believe the backrooms and the party bosses that MMP is bad for Ontario. That will mean either choosing to remain ignorant about the positive record of MMP in countries that use it or pretending that record doesn’t make a difference.

Or voters can trust the the group of average people like us who got an amazing education on the topic of voting systems and came up with a moderate and sensible recommendation for modernizing the way we elect our representatives.

Maybe that's why the defenders of the status are so set on misrepresenting the Citizens' Assembly's work.

Coyne: "MMP does not mean appointed party hacks"

Another great - and timely considering the Liberals' announcement today - post from Andrew Coyne.

It's a concise and well-written piece that accurately describes how parties will choose list candidates.

"Appointed" List MPP myth debunked

A little birdy sent me an email from Don Guy at the Liberal campaign. Here it is:

We are committed to choosing all of our candidates through a democratic and transparent process. We are pleased that our party attracts people from all walks of life and we will continue to work to ensure our party reflects the diverse and multi-cultural nature of Ontario.

We are pleased to be the only party to meet its Equal Voice target of nominating at least 50% of women in our unheld ridings for this election campaign. And we remain committed to further improving the prospects of women candidates running for our party in the future.

So now that all of the major political parties in Ontario have committed to democratically selecting their list candidates under MMP, I expect that defenders of the electoral status quo will stop misinforming Ontarians by claiming they will.

Intellectual honesty would demand that, I'd think.

(More on this important issue at Scott's Diatribes, Democratic Space and Liberals for MMP)

Monday Night MMP link blast

As expected, the discussion of MMP is (finally) starting to increase in the media. There are a few pieces on note that have come out in the past few days that I wanted to bring attention to.

First, today’s Globe and Mail had a great column from Roy MacGregor, who shows why he’s one of the best in the business:

That second vote will be held on whether or not to approve Mixed Member Proportional, a political reform idea that sounds, unfortunately, like a bad title for a porn movie - which may explain the reaction of some shoppers to any mention of it.
It is a bad phrase that has simply not caught on. No one talks "MMP." Some know there will be a "referendum," but not much more.

"Can you give me a quick and easy explanation about the possible repercussions of the referendum question?" a politically aware woman from Northern Ontario writes in an e-mail. "Please keep in mind my attention span, like that of most other voters, is very short for this type of issue."

Quick and easy, I'm afraid, doesn't quite work.

MacGregor continues:

Those behind MMP have put up convincing arguments for MMP being a fairer system and a system that has worked elsewhere, such as New Zealand. It offers hope to the underdog and the marginalized.

One of the supporters' studies says that Ontario elections are essentially decided by 75,000 "super-voters" who just happen to live in tight ridings where the slightest shifts will decide who rules and who sulks. The predicted 4.7 million who will vote on Oct. 10, therefore, will have their government determined by 1.5 per cent of the electorate. Not fair.

Knowing Ontario's reluctance to embrace change, the MMP campaign includes a delightful skit featuring Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce greeting historical change - the 1888 drive to allow non-property owners to vote, the 1919 push to enfranchise women - with a cackling dismissal that to do so would "be the end of civilization as we know it."

It’s great to see MacGregor bring some much needed attention to the debate and we really appreciate the link and the shout-out to the Ferguson video, but I’ve got to disagree with him that you can’t explain MMP in a quick and easy way. I think that those who want to preserve the status quo are very keen to make MMP more complicated than it really is.

Simply, under MMP you get one ballot with two votes. One to pick your favorite local candidate and another to pick your favorite party. The overall standings at Queen’s Park will reflect how we vote on the second vote.

There you go, explained MMP in 39 words.

The other great MMP piece that came out recently was another column by MMPs "great right hope" National Post columnist Andrew Coyne. The column title tells it all - "PR:Debunking the fearmongers". Here are some highlights:

Indeed, apologists for the status quo have more or less given up arguing for first past the post on its merits. The pretense that it delivers "stable majorities" can no longer be sustained: recent elections in Ontario have produced, in order, NDP, Conservative and Liberal governments, none with a majority of the votes, yet each interpreting the support of its own minority as a mandate to impose a succession of radically different policy regimes on the rest of us.

As Coyne, notes the arguments against MMP are generally misinformed, disingenuous or some combination thereof:

So, to take up the first, we are told that changing the system will result in chronic instability, a series of minority governments, one falling after the other; or else that it will lead to chronic gridlock, a legislature divided into dozens of smaller parties, some extremist, who would use their bargaining power to hijack the political process, demanding that one or other of the mainstream parties adopt their agenda in return for their support. The spectre of Israel and Italy are often invoked, as if to cinch the argument.

We can dispose of the last easily enough. One: Israel and Italy are uniquely divided societies, and were long before they adopted PR. Two: Neither country has ever used anything like the mixed system proposed for Ontario, but rather adopted much more extreme forms of PR, with no threshold for support.

As for the more specific fears, they would perhaps be more tenable were we the first country ever to try proportional representation -- were it not already in use, in one form or another, in most of the democratic world. But in fact it is, and in no country have any of the scare stories come to pass ...

As for the prospect of extremist hijackings, that is supported neither by experience nor common sense, depending as it does on a number of increasingly unlikely conditions: that the extremist party has just enough seats to hold the balance of power; that none of the larger parties' members break ranks, but rigidly vote the party line; that, likewise, the mainstream parties are incapable of voting with one another to defeat the extremists; and, most importantly, that none of the parties, large or small, pays any price for their behaviour with the electorate.

In the last line, he says he'll be back with a second column to further debunk the fatuous arguments against MMP in particular. Can't wait!

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention to absolutely horrendous Toronto Star editorial over the weekend.

Vote for MMP rips apart their flimsy arguments in a couple of press releases.

Hat tip also to my friend Queer Liberal who cancelled his Star subscription over their baseless slurs against MMP.

Lots of press on the referendum today

There was lots of press about MMP and the referendum today and I wanted to share some of the highlights.

First up is a great column by political scientist David Docherty, Dean of Arts at Wilfrid Laurier University. It's so good, I've just got to quote some great sections:

We are rarely given the opportunity to fully participate in democratic reform. Until now, most attempts at addressing the so-called democratic deficit have been in ways that we, as voters, do not directly feel. Improving the role of MPPs, directing more resources and power to legislative committees, and allowing more free votes are all important. But electoral reform -- determining how we choose the women and men to govern us -- is the single largest step we can take to reshape how our electoral and legislative system operates.

Docherty, who spoke to the Citizens' Assembly during the one weekend of their learned phase I observed in Toronto and really impressed me with his thoughtful points, argues that MMP would legislative scrutiny of the government significantly. He also dismisses the pro-status quo canard that list MPPs would be "hacks":

The actual individuals who will represent the party in Queen's Park will be chosen from a list created by the party. The method of choosing the list will be made public prior to election day so voters will know if the list was determined democratically or "in the backrooms" as some opponents have suggested. This provides voters with the opportunity to pass judgment not only on a party's platform, but on how they came up with their list of candidates, which is hardly undemocratic.

Further, the fact that the list compensates for the plurality system means that most list members will be in opposition, not in the government. As a result, unencumbered by constituency duties, these members will have more time to engage in the critical scrutiny function. We must remember that one of primary tasks of MPPs is to keep the government -- that is, the cabinet -- accountable for its actions. This means holding them to the fire to ensure that tax dollars are spent wisely and that needed services are provided to citizens.

He concludes by arguing that MMP would invigorate the political system, certainly among youth, who have been getting very engaged in the campaign for electoral reform:

[MMP] is not a panacea for all our democratic problems. It is not the single best system in the world: there is none. But it might just encourage some people who have checked out of our system to check back in.

I have talked to too many young citizens who are willing to vote but feel it is a waste of time. They feel the three major parties do not speak to them, and voting for a minor party produces no results.

If all mixed-member proportional does is get young people to vote, and if we end up with a few Green MPPs or one or two "Youth Party" MPPs isn't it worth it?

Our present system entrenches the status quo. Changing our electoral system is a bold statement that our democracy is a living institution. Let's not lose the opportunity to demonstrate this to the rest of the country.

Also, there were more great articles in other publications today. Rick Salutin argues (couldn't agree more) that voting for MMP is a "no brainer".

Ivor Tossell - rightly - complains about the lack of public engagement in the campaign. I don't think our site is "politics-as-usual", but I whole-heartedly agree that No MMP's site "reads like one long sneer, long on rhetoric and short on facts". Most importantly, Tossell accurately describes how Elections Ontario is failing democracy by pretending the Citizens' Assembly never happened:

This referendum is really a ratification of [the Citizens' Assembly's] decision. To make an informed vote, we don't merely need to know how MMP works; we need to know what made the Assembly think it's such a great idea compared to the status quo. And that's where this site falls down: To give a complete picture, it needs to broadcast the results of the process it set in motion, and it doesn't. By hiding behind a neutral stance, the Ontario government has hung its own election reforms out to dry.

Finally, there was a story in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen based on one of Vote for MMP's internal newsletters. It's always good to get press and as I'll argue in this blog, it's certainly fair to describe the campaign for the status quo as a "dirty tricks" campaign.

I'll end with a quote from my colleague and friend Steve Withers:

"These people are making these claims utterly disconnected from reality," he said. "They don't care what the truth is. That's why it's black propaganda and dirty tricks.

"It's just raw fear. They can't defend the present system, so all they can do is try to instill fear about the new one."

Mr. Withers saw MMP in action in New Zealand, where he lived until returning to Ontario this spring.

"It's bloody brilliant. This is why, when you see people sitting there telling half-truths about the party hacks and extremist parties, if you actually look at the real world, it's ... obvious it's complete rubbish."

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.

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.