NDP and proportional representation?

I have asked three times for someone to reference the policy document, and no one has been able too. Instead of doing so, you come up with more argument, for some reason.

NDP web site:

Thank you.

Being the dogged type myself, I'm inclined to see intinsic value in this kind of persistence.

That said:

No one person can expect to have much impact. But you arent the only one pursuing this line/path. You think maybe the lack of results might be saying something about the method being used rather than the apparent intractability of the audience? Or, as much as that intractability?

And you have to at least admitt that 'explanations' are inherently a didactic discourse. And agrred or not, there's an argument this itself is a fundamental proble. You just cant say explanation IS engagement. Its only engagement if 'the other side' is, well, engaged. And we agree they arent.

But I dont think this is the place for that discussion- which is why I moved the post you are responding at to the thread mentioned.

Really? Well PR seems to be more popular than the NDP, does that mean that the NDP is dead in Canada?

Interesting that The Federal NDP specifically mentions Mixed Member Proportional over, say, STV.  Out here on the wacky west coast, the party elite seems to take the attitude, MMP if necessary but not necessarily PR.  MMP will allow the party to maintain control.

During the last BC election, we were treated to the spectacle of the leader of the Ontario NDP endorsing STV while the leader of the BC NDP maintained official neutrality while obviously hoping it would be voted down.  What a travesty.

The PR debate is why I have such disdain for political parties, the NDP included.  They're vote getting machines, pure and simple.   FPTP is undemocratic and any party with any integrity should be promoting PR.

Offhand, I can only think of one political party in Canada who

a) is in a position where they could reasonably expect to land a "phony" majority under FPTP rules and

b) has advocated PR

And that party is the Conservative Party of Canada.  It pains me to say it but there it is.

In the wake of the BC result, all of the evidence I saw overwhelmingly indicated that people only had a vague idea of what they were voting on.  Nobody understood STV, it sounded weird so they voted against it in droves.  But here's the kicker.  People might think they understand FPTP but if you ask them to explain how it's possible that 35% of the votes can get a party an absolute majority of seats, most couldn't.

Political scientist Dennis Pilon has written an excellent book on the topic.  He found that most countries that made the transition from FPTP to PR did so because they found themselves in historical circumstances where it was imposed or where 2 or more of the major parties found it advantageous to have PR.

The Conservatives [former] advocacy of PR isnt worth the paper it is printed on.

Even when Harper is gone, there will be less chance of manouvering them into some lukewarm support than there is with the Liberals.

Their advocay would be a remnant of Reform. What Reform party?

Surely there must be some traction to be had for a party that is polling at 17% to attaching itself to an issue that is supported by far more people than vote for it?

If MMP is good enough for Venezuela, it should be good enough in the Northern Puerto Rico, too. DAY-O!

It looked like it was probably [another] throwaway comment Cue. But thats just a guess [it has the construct of a throwaway]: for me at least, you'll have to spell out what you meant.

Well, lets see, Harper rules with 36% in the polls. PR is supported by at least 40% of the electorate. The NDP sits at 17% in the polls. Surely there should be something to gain by actively promoting an attachment to a cause that has more support in the population than the party does as a whole?

It's all there in the NDP's vision for Canada under the heading, closing the democracy gap, nzzuh!. I mean, Renewing Canadian Democracy.

Yes. Fidel Unionist posted that up thread. KenS seems to have a problem with party members lobbying for it within the party and Stockholm wishes that Canada were like Australia, mate.

Does it?

Apples to apples.

How many choices are on the ballot with PR? ...not to mention that 40% would be the peak of what some form of PR has achieved somehere in Canada.

Like I suspected, it was a toss off point [dig]. But pretending you cared: trust me, there is nothing utilitarian for the NDPs selfish electoral prospects in that 30 or 40%

Dont forget, we're ruled by the almighty extra vote and care about nothing else. If there were votes there to be had, we'd be there too.

[grunt, grunt]

Thats some pretty tortured logic getting that out of what I said.

Let's see, theoretically if 17% of voters support closing the democracy gap, and zero percent of the other two parties support election reform, then PR doesn't stand a chance in a referendum.

Therefore, the other two party leaders would have to promote ER as well in order for it to stand a chance of passing a referendum, and after they agree to a public information campaign followed by a referendum. Otherwise their voters aren't going to budge on the issue of ER, and especially if their fearless party leaders are mum about it.

In other words, no one single party can promote ER while the other two dog in manger parties decide that it's better to keep the phony majority machine. The decision to promote ER and work toward ER has to be a democratic decision by the other two so-called party leaders and their brass.

I suggest that some provincial NDP government should just run on proportional representation as a part of its campaign, making it clear that it will impliment when it wins, then when people see what a great success it is, then it will be firmly on the national agenda. That is the way healthcare happened. But there is all this hemming and hawing, and no provincial party that has just had the FPTP give them a phoney baloney majority will ever use that phoney baloney majority to undermine their ability to get phoney baloney majorities, and that is the truth of that.

That's it in a nutshell.  If suddenly, the NDP was a contender for a Federal phoney majority, you can bet that PR would magically slide way down the priority list.

Cueball, if you think that all electoral politics are a useless waste of time - why do you keep posting about which electoral syetm might get used?? Surely, if you think all elections are useless then arguing about PR or FPTP is really just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

...and guess what? with PR political parties would be more important than ever since we would all be voting for parties not individual candidates - independents who refuse to be part of a party cannot exist in a PR system

Perhaps someone can find the policy statement of the federal NDP on the issue?

In the Ontario MMP referendum, the NDP supported a Yes vote, and Howard Hampton said so.

They largely gave it lip service in their northern strongholds because the model was not saleable outside Toronto, especially in the North. The NDP had held their own hearings in 2002 and adopted an excellent PR policy, which specified regional top-up MPPs and that the North must be a region. Most politically aware Northern residents are rightly paranoid about losing representation. They were afraid that the "top-up" MPPs, from province-wide lists, would not match the number of local MPPs the North would lose. The North voted more heavily against MMP than any other region of Ontario, despite it being the NDP's best region, and that's why.

But the same thing happened everywhere. For example: York Region, a heavily conservative area with no active pro-MMP campaign on the ground, gave MMP more support than Ottawa, although Ottawa has lots of progressive voters, a very strong local pro-MMP campaign, and excellent coverage in the Ottawa Citizen which (unlike the Toronto media) published a large spread on the Citizens' Assembly and how MMP would work. But most people in Ottawa didn't like the idea of province-wide lists either. The strongest resistence came from Franco-Ontariens. Their organizations came out strongly against it, again fearing they would lose representation.

MMP's strongest proponent in cabinet, John Gerretsen, had advocated regional MMP even before the whole Citizens' Assembly process started. He specifically wanted mid-sized regions, such that Kingston would be in a different region than Ottawa. An Eastern region like the Champlain LHIN would have been entirely in bilingual ridings. In place of their present ten local MPPs they would have had eight or nine local MPPs and three or four regional MPPs. The Franco-Ontariens should have been very happy, just as those Northern New Democrats like Cam Holmstrom who campaigned against MMP would have been very happy (he said so).

It didn't happen because the whole process started a year later than the Democratic Renewal Secretariat had planned. We won't know why until Matthew Mendelsohn writes his book, if he ever does. In that case, the Assembly would have had another three weekends to deliberate, and would have had time to reconsider province-wide closed lists. With regional lists, it would have been feasible to let voters vote for a specific regional candidate (open-list) as the Law Commission of Canada had recommended [51]. With closed lists, we showed we had not listened to the Jenkins Commission in the UK which had warned that top-up MPPs locally anchored are "more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions."

And the campaign would have had an extra ten months with no simultaneous election campaign. The saddest example of the timing was what it did to the Ontario NDP: by the time the CA Report was made final, the NDP had no time to conduct any internal process to come up with a statement on how the NDP would have democratically nominated candidates to a province-wide list. (In little New Zealand, with nation-wide lists for their MMP system, Labour holds six regional nomination conventions, and then folds the six lists into one.)

As to provinces, the Saskatchewan provincial NDP has been agonizing over PR for quite some time. During their last term in government, they debated it formally, with a PR Task Force, and finally decided to proceed. In the last election campaign their platform included holding a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. Alas, too late. If they had done this four years earlier, Saskatchewan would have PR by now.

Oddly enough, Scotland, which has closed-list MMP (albeit with regional lists), allows independents to run for regional seats, and a couple of them have been elected.

Untrue.  Under STV, independents are perfectly electable.  And, as Wilf pointed out, it's even possible to have independents under MMP.

So until Canada's two Bay Street parties decide to call the NDP's bluff on ER, the NDP will have to continue show-boating with ER merely a plank in their election campaign platform.

- that would depend on the PR system - many if not most of them remain riding based, and if an independent receives a majority of votes in any riding - even a plurality if you set the system up in certain ways - they will certainly be given the seat. It might be difficult or impossible to do a full PR type thing nationally (or provincially), but it shouldn't deny any single independent in any single riding a majority seat ....

- I don't think that follows, Fidel - you might look at Mulroney's big failure with the Charlottetown Accord, for instance, when EVERY party, plus Big Business, plus the MSM, were telling Cdns the country was doomed if they did not follow along - and we managed to vote against it nonetheless. Admittedly the couple of chances voters have had to vote for PR were failures - but then, they got close to 40% in BC, which was, I think, quite a larger figure than the NDP support (stand to be corrected there, maybe..) - but it doesn't really matter - but that is why I say that if the NDP is serious about PR, they should be doing an ongoing education program, every chance they get, signs in riding office windows, literature available, talking about it ever chance they get, etc etc - so over time a slow movement grows (a fast movement would be better, but that would require the cooperation of the MSM, which obviously we/they do not have) - but if people were constantly reminded about the problems of FPTP, and how PR would at least to some extent mediate those problems, we might slowly grow a movement and increase our odds of getting this done. The MSM does this all the time (in service to their corporate masters) - we need to learn from them, and do the same.

Well you could be right, although I think there were too many contitutional issues covered by that accord. Electoral reform is a single issue. I think New Zealand helf two referendums: one to decide whether they should ditch FPTP for something better, which should not be difficult to convince prople of, and second referendum on which method of voting to choose. But I think what's key is a well-funded public information campaign. I'd use catchy slogans such as, One Person One Vote! and so on.

Wikipedia says:

We need a fair public information campaign, and we also need the leaders of the other two parties to endorse ER, or not enough of their voters will support it. Ideally we want to aim high and win the highest percentage of support for ER. People should be excited about modernizing our electoral system and not indifferent about it nor should they be unsure of how a new system should work. Most of all they should understand how undemocratic and mathematically absurd the current method of voting really is. FPTP is tantamount to election fraud. It's not too far removed from the "lady of the lake" method, or choosing kings by Excalibur(Monty Python). Perhaps we could even get those guys to agree to allowing video clips of their stuff in a public campaign for ER just to drive the point home for people.

I agree with almost all of that - and who is going to tell Canadians these things? Very obviously the MSM is not going to - they do their best to spread lies and fear anytime this issue gets anywhere near the public attention - and pretty much as equally obviously nobody in the two main parties are going to push PR - so if anybody with anything like some kind of access to the MSM is going to start making this stuff a public issue, it's the NDP or nobody. This might be dangerous - if, as I believe, part of the reason the MSM talks about the NDP at all is because they are 'safe', then trying to actually educate Cdns about the problems with FPTP, and why PR would be much better, in terms of fairness - well, the MSM might well decide the NDP were to be treated like the only Cdn party which makes PR front and center in their platform (that would be the CAP people, who are totally marginalized by the MSM, for this and other reasons (they also talk about the problems with bank-created money, a far, far, FAR more dangerous thing to the established powers than PR).
So - the question then becomes - why are the NDP so silent about PR? I don't care if they mention it in their campaign literature or anything - the question is, why aren't they talking about it every chance they get? It is, in essence, far more important than most of the short-term hot-button issues that get their 15 minutes on the MSM every day. And as we have talked about, education is a long-term process, getting people familiar with something, and then bringing them over to your way of thinking - you cannot do this in a short election campaign, with endless distractions - it needs to be systematic, long term - and if the NDP were actually serious about it, they would be doing this - in my opinion, at least.

"Well, lets see, Harper rules with 36% in the polls. PR is supported by at least 40% of the electorate. The NDP sits at 17% in the polls. Surely there should be something to gain by actively promoting an attachment to a cause that has more support in the population than the party does as a whole?"

For all I know, 80% of Canadians like strawberries - that doesn't mean that if the NDP came out woth a "free strawberry" policy it would win 80% of the vote. It doesn't work that way. There is maybe 1% of Canadians (and I'm being generous here) who consider electoral reform to be an important vote determining issue. Who cares if 36% of people think PR is a good idea if the vast majority of those people also don't see it as an important issue.

Stockholm, you're just reinforcing what I said about the major parties (NDP included).  They're vote-accumulating machines where doing the right thing is subordinated to doing what's popular.  It seems to me there was once a concept called leadership.  That meant that you would take an unpopular stance, risking losing support for what you felt was right.  You would go and try to convince people of your position rather than just drift in the winds of public opinion. 

The federal leaders that are most showing that type of leadership are Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe.

Actually, BC voters strongly supported a switch to the STV form of PR in the 2005 referendum.

In order to pass, the referendum had to receive 60% of the province-wide popular vote and a simple majority in 60% (48 of 79) of the electoral districts. The initiative narrowly missed the 60% popular vote threshold (57%) and overwhelmingly passed the simple majority of electoral districts threshold (97%). link [62]

__________________________________

One struggle, many fronts.

I don't think the NDP would actually lose any votes if it spent the whole election campaign next year talking about electoral reform because of people being against electoral reform. But I think the party would lose a ton of votes if it kept on talking about such an esoteric subject that no one cares about - apart from a few electoral reform wonks doing graduate degrees in political science.

Similarly, in the US the vast majority of Americans want to do away with the electoral college and elect a president by direct popular vote - but if you think you could get elected President by giving speeches in front of padlocked factories and poverty strikcken slums saying "Elect me so we can get rid of the electoral college!" = forget it!!

People care about issues that affect them personally - not arcane debates about MMP vs STV vs. AV vs FPTP etc... In any case, the most certain way to sabotage any move towards electoral reform would be have it seen to be championed by one party for its own political benefit. If electoral reform is ever going to happen it has to happen though a non-partisan campaign that involves people from all political parties.

I realize there are a dozen or so people in Canada who have this bizarre fascination with tinkering with the electoral system - and i admit that i indulge in that sometimes as well. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that the average person cares at all about electoral reform.

In any case, the only way we will ever get electoral reform in Canada is if there is a minority government and the NDP is in a position to demand it as part of a deal. There is no other way, the Liberals and Tories have no interest in reforming the system because they've done well by FPTP and the BQ LOVES first past the post because that's how they get 50 seats in Quebec when they share of the popular vote will only get them 28! We have no mechanism for a citizen initiated national referendum.

I hope you aren't deluding yourself into thinking that this would change at all under PR. Parties will always be "vote-accumulating machines" where the system is PR or FPTP. Ask anyone in the Netherlands if they think PR is so great now that four months have passed since their election and they still have no government and all the parties are considering making deals with parties they solemnly promised never to talk to. I still support PR - but if you think its going to be some sort of of panacea - think again.

Meanwhile, the federal NDP is 100% unswervingly in favour of proportional representation - so i don't know what you're complaining about. What will satisfy you? When the NDP becomes a single issue party that ONLY talks about electoral reform and ignores everything else? We have an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an eduaction crisis, an environmental crisis - and you think parties should drop everything and only talk about your dinky little issue of changing the electoral system that no one else cares about. Dream on.

I'm not sure what position Gilles Duceppe have ever shown leadership on. I know he propped up Harper for two years and he prevented the federal minimum wage from being increased - good for him! He doesn't have to show any leadership since he isn't running to be in power all he wants to do is obstruct. He has the EASIEST job in Canadian politics since all he has to do is say "No" to everything and never take any responsibility for anything.

- being 100% in favor of something is pretty irrelevant if you don't talk about it, as the NDP are not. I don't think anyone is saying they should become a one-issue party, but what they could and should be doing between elections to raise awareness of the problems with FPTP and how PR would help is talking about the other issues you mention - and as often as possible, in varying ways, point out that all of these problems are related to false majority governments put in place by FPTP, and that if the NDP had the share of seats that PR would **rightfully** give them, it is highly probable that they would have been able to at least reduce the scale of these problems, and etc. Going right back to, for example, "free" trade - the media now talks about 'Canadians embracing free trade in 1988' and other such things - the NDP could be pointing out, over and over, that actually Canadians rejected free trade by something like 56% to 44% - but because of the built-in tendency of FPTP to give false majorities, we got free trade. And etc - if the NDP had of had their fair number of seats during the ensuing years, they would have been able to do much more in fighting to stop the rightwing takeover of Canada. Even Harper's minority governments might well have not happened - with PR, the Libs and NDP and Greens could have easily formed a majority coalition (never mind Harper's screaming etc), which would probably at least get some people interested enough to get informed - and I think that is what is needed, getting people informed - it seems pretty much a no-brainer that PR is far superior to FPTP for anyone who cares about fairness, and the good of the country, as most people do, I think, even if they aren't that bright or well-informed about political things like PR (which is, of course, exactly what the MSM and Bay St parties want - so again it is puzzling the NDP is not making more efforts to educate them - unless they're just another Bay St party with a different flag ... )

Bay Street Parties and banksters I don't think there were any NDPers in attendance. Follow political party campaign funding to which street?

You need to connect the esoteric to the practical.  If PR had been in effect in Ontario 20 years ago the Walkerton disaster would not have happened, because Mike Harris would not have had a free hand to trash the province.  It's also true that the NDP would not have been able to pass employment equity legislation.

Between those 2 arguments you ought to be able to catch almost all the province.

"I don't think anyone is saying they should become a one-issue party, but what they could and should be doing between elections to raise awareness of the problems with FPTP and how PR would help is talking about the other issues you mention - and as often as possible, in varying ways, point out that all of these problems are related to false majority governments put in place by FPTP"

Its pretty hard to make that argument when we've had minority governments under FPTP since 2004 and probably forever into the future. You can try to talk about 1988 and free trade - but then you could turn around and argue that Sasktachewan should never have had Medicare since the CCF never won over 50% of the vote in a provincial election there and under PR it is almost certain that a rightwing coalition of Liberals and Conservatives would have ensured that no CCF government EVER took poweer there.

"If PR had been in effect in Ontario 20 years ago the Walkerton disaster would not have happened, because Mike Harris would not have had a free hand to trash the province."

The Ontario Liberals would have happily supported all his cutbacks and deregulation schemes - i doubt if PR would have prevented Walkerton.

- I don't suspect they'd advertise it if they were really taking orders from Bay St - but it was a hell of a thing to see Ed Broadbent refuse to take the 'free trade' election seriously - and then wind up a few months later with a really cushy job, courtesy of Mr Mulroney, who benefited, along with his Bay St masters, from the poor campaign .... and Bob Rae seems to have done pretty well for himself in 'the big leagues' after leading the Ontario NDP into oblivion - probably some people on the left should find a book called The Prince and have a read about how 'realpolitik' is done by those who are serious about getting power, and keeping it ... a perusal of another book on The Art of War, which politics is, by a guy called Sun Tzu also has a lot of interesting stuff, for those actually serious about power and the winning of battles -

Stockholmer, you're talking about past election results and past voter turnouts and making them instant PR results. I don't think the dynamics would be the same. I think it would have been more obvious to Canadians that the Liberals were just another conservative party earlier on. Had the 1988 federal election been a proportional result, the Liberals and NDP together should have had more seats combined than Mulroney's Tories. The Liberals would have been forced to show their true colours on Mulroney's FTA years earlier than they did with signing NAFTA by 1994.

There is no money trail leading from the NDP to Bay Street either. If you prefer Bay Street running things in this country, then make sure not to vote NDP. It's as good as voting for BCM, or bank-created money and pro-creditor policies, pro-corporate America versus the interests of ordinary Canadians. Because we know how much you love the fact that our stooges in power and phony opposition in Ottawa are shoveling $160 million bucks to the banksters every day in interest payments- and $60 billion a year, Siam Dave. If that's a-okay with you, then make sure never-ever to vote NDP. You won't be disappointed, I guarantee it.

Wow. I had to step out of lurking on Babble to finally say something. Stockholm's posts on this thread made me. Normally I agree with them, but on this topic Stockholm's comments are so far off base I don't even know where to start.

OK, maybe here:

Have to disagree with you completely here. I'm not sure how familiar you are with proportional systems used around the world, but there are independents elected in many countries that use proportional representation. It depends on the system used. Under Single Transferrable Vote or "Alternative Vote +" for example, independents have about as good a chance of being elected as under our "Winner-take-all" system. Sometimes better.

These statements, only a paragraph apart in the same post, are really contradictory. Which is it? I believe there actually IS a non-partisan campaign involving people from different parties, but we don't have PR yet. Maybe that campaign has been ineffective. Or maybe it needs time to educate people, to make them see how fundamentally important electoral reform is to policy (or lack of policy) on almost every other issue out there.

I hope its the latter, because if an election were held soon resulting in the current NDP holding the balance of power, you can bet your last dollar they would throw their only chance at electoral refrom right out the window in exchange for a little power. All signs point to evidence that they've done it before, like the Rae govt and the recent NDP-Liberal Coalition Agreement. And there are NO signs that they have made this a pritority AT ALL in the past number of years. I even heard that MPs like Paul Dewar and Libby Davies wouldn't meet with their own constituents this year who wanted to talk to their MP about electoral reform. Its something they should be in favor of if "official policy" is to be believed. If that isn't zero priority, I don't know what is.

To be fair, Stockholm is mischaracterizing the arguments of others here. Nobody in this thread has suggested the NDP become a single-issue party, only that it live up to it's own policies and actually PROPOSE SOMETHING on electoral reform. The NDP has done NOTHING on the file for years now... no legislation, no press conferences with Jack pointing out why it's such a problem for other issues too. And who else will champion this issue, if not the NDP? Even national and local columnists are pointing to it as a fundamental problem now (eg. Coyne, Simpson, Hebert, Gibson, others) that absolutely must be addressed. When Andrew Coyne leaves the NDP in the dust on calling for electoral reform, it's kind of like the NDP falling so far behind that Conservative Senators are proposing more progressive policies. Oh wait, that's already happening too.

Ahhh, so here is your real attitude towards it. People that care about electoral reform are rarified "wonks doing graduate degrees in political science". NEWSFLASH: Canadians are unhappy with the system the way it is, with politics the way they're going, and they are angry enough to take to the steets when their democracy is prorogued. That's undeniable, and it's also signs of an anger rioling just under the surface. Alert them to where their anger should be directed - the dysfunctional voting system that is the root cause of many of their grievances - and all of a sudden the whole equation changes. The way each country has dumped winner-take-all for proportionality is unique, but they all did it once the political classes took electoral reform seriously. Right now even the NDP is not taking the majority of Canadians who want electoral reform seriously. Instead, its been condescending lip service.

Sadly, what has NDP democratic reform critic David Christopherson done on it since becoming critic? The thundering silence of the NDP on electoral reform is speaking louder than their empty policies.

Do you really? Because it sure sounds like you support it as much as Layton's NDP does, which is not at all. Using an extreme example (the Netherlands has a 100% proportional system, which no-one is proposing for Canada) is like saying proportional representation will turn us into "Italy or Israel". Sounds disturbingly like Liberal/Conservative talking points on the issue.

Stockholm, you normally post well-thought and even insightful comments. But on this one, you might be so close to the Party Line that you don't see the forest for the trees. Proportional representation is worth fighting for, and needs political leadership if it ever is to come to fruition. It's fundamental to the future of the country... New Democrats can educate and convince Canadians about that, just like they convinced Canadians about the importance of universal health care or pensions. It just takes the will.

I think its the job of non-partisan organizations like Fair Vote Canada to make the case for electoral reform. If the NDP spends an inordinate amount of time talking about proportional representation it will just make the whole issue look like nothing more than a scheme to get the NDP more seats

The main argument that people raise for PR is that the current system isn't "fair" - fair to who??? I ask because the public generally hates political parties and really doesn't give a damn about whether one party or another is jumping up and down and saying "t'aint fair"!

Its absurd to compare the effort the NDP puts into an issue like electoral reform to what what pundits and columnists like Andrew Coyne say about it. Coyne is not running for political office. He is a gadfly pundit who is free to write about any esoteric issue he wants and doesn't need to get votes from anywhere.

My point about the Netherlands is simply that no one should assume that PR is some great panacea that will lead to better government. maybe it will maybe it won't. I support some form of proportional representation at the federal level in Canada because I think it would reduce regional tensions by giving all parties representation in all provinces and it would also make parties more cooperative since there would be less tempatation to have a snap election where a 2% swing could mean an extra 30 seats etc...But, I do not for one second think that PR would necessarily mean more progressive government. In fact, I suspect that if we had it - we would probably see the emergence of an quasi-permanent Conservative-Liberal centre right coalition.

Almost every country in the wesern world seems to have the same pattern of declining voter turnout and more and more popular revolt against national institutions. I don't think its any worse in Canada because we have FPTP. I really don't see what prorogation has to do with anything. We have a minority government now - and parliament was prorogued. If we had PR would have more minority governments that would also be able to prorogue parliament anytime they wanted to. If you want to prevent a repeat of Harper prorogation in December - the way to do it is to pass laws or even amend the constitution to make it impossible for the  PM to prorogue without the consent of parliament.

Its absurd to say that because New Democrats made the case for pensions and health care - we can make Canadians suddenly see electoral reform as the new holy grail that will improve everyone quality of life. Who's life does it improve other than politicians in parties who would get more seats? Medicare and pensions are TANGIBLE things that have a direct impact on peoples lives. The only way to make people think that PR would have any impact on their lives would be to force the entire population to tke a graduate level course on comparative electoral systems.

My rule of thumb about political issues is that if it takes more than 120 seconds to expalin to some people in a coffee shop in Brampton - forget it - so one will bother learning about it. If you seriously think that ordianry people in Saskatoon or Kitchener or Yellowknife are suddenly going to get transfixed by discussing MMP vs STV vs FPTP and what they think of the D'Hondt formula  etc... think again.

I'm sorry, I wish it were different, but i talk to a lot of people from all walks of life and so far the only people who EVER talk about the electoral process are a few eccentric wonks with graduate degrees in poli sci. No one else cares - and unfortunately - explaining to people why they shold care invariably involves about a wto hour long discussion. Its a waste of time.

Canadians haven't elected independents in any significant numbers. And I think voters in most countries tend to vote for members of a party campaigning under a platform of policies common to every other member of the party at senior levels of government. I think the lack of a well outlined platform of policies is what tends to hurt the election chances of individuals flying the jolly roger. They tend to have no real platform for voters to refer to.

Why would Canadians be more inclined to vote for independents under a PR system?

- the thing is, Fidel, 70-80% of Canadians support the things the NDP says they support, and do not care for the taking apart of Canada as both the Cons and Libs have been doing. YOu would think with that kind of dynamic, it would be at least a doable sell for the NDP to increase their seats, if they really wanted to, and worked at it - but who's been winning for the last 30 years? Sure tne MSM has a lot to do with it - but why are the NDP so passive in their fight for Canada? Like the PR stuff - not a word, really, although it would mean a pretty serious increase in their seats - and in their ability to hold back the negative things happening. Why not a word on the bank-created money stuff - this is not complicated, surely there must be people around who understand it and could explain to the NDP leaders how important this is - but again, nary a word. It is very, very hard not to at least wonder if there isn't some behind-the-scenes agreement between the NDP leadership and the people really running the country - along the lines of, you guys get to play in the sandbox, with the big boys, if you keep away from a couple of key topics, and etc. As somebody who is able to understand that the lack of signed confessions does not mean there was no conspiracy concerning 911, I am surprised at your apparently blind defence of the NDP.

It's our obsolete electoral system, SiamDave. We have a little more than half of eligible voters actually showing up to vote in this country. 22 percent chose Harper's Conservatives to lead. I'm sorry, but any party that wants to win seats in an election has to focus on appealing to a limited range of voters - ie. the ones doing the voting aka the ones doing the choosing.

With our obsolete electoral system, we will continue sending a lot of well educated white males to Ottawa, too. Why? Because that's how a phony majority of voters tend to vote in most ridings across Canada. These people insisting that the NDP commit political suicide by campaigning as if the election system was fair and that one person equals one vote are missing the point altogether. They insist that because the two dirty old line pro-Bray Street parties play dirty, the NDP must stick to leftwing morals and ethics if they want to increase voter turnout and their chances of winning makes absolutely no sense at all. And I think it demonstrates a lack of understanding how our obsolete electoral system actually punishes that kind of political campaign strategy.

Canadians are used to the two old line party leaders lying their heads off in election campaigns. It's why voter turnouts are so shitty today and not because the NDP is not good enough.The NDP has no federal record in power to criticize or even examine at this point. We can't blame the problems of the past and present on a party that has never governed federally. Excuse me but that's just the ultimate in stupidity. It makes no sense. We have very many jaded voters across Canada. It's going to take a lot to fix the democracy gap in this country. The NDP could use a lot of help from the unions, and at the grassroots and civil society groups level. Afterall, the two dirty old line parties have Bay Street funding in their corner - the NDP or any other third party needs to have a similar advantage in people support if not big money financing for big money electioneering.

I don't quite get all that, but I think I disagree with most of it. First you blame our obsolete voting system for the NDPs problems - the obsolete voting system has not helped anything, but the voting system has not stopped the NDP from formulating principled positions and talking about them - which they have not been doing much of, it seems - the deafening silence, as remarked on by others as well as myself, concerning PR being just one quite notable example.

You note,  again accurately, that only half of elegible voters show up these days at elections, which is true enough - but then you seem to say that all parties have to chase these voters if they want to win, and since old line parties lie and so on, the NDP must do so also, just to compete (you seem to say this, it is somewhat unclear - but you seem to be upset at the idea that the NDP should 'commit political suicide .. by (sticking) to ethics, ..' etc). I myself think more or less the opposite - if almost half of the voters are not voting, and many if not most of them because they are disillusioned with old style politics, then it would seem to be in the nature of a no-brainer that getting the confidence of these voters would be a good political move.

It would not happen overnight, of course, as it is very true as you say, that voters are very jaded (this goes back a long ways - I ran as a National Party candidate in 93 in PEI, and I couldn't believe the distrust and dislike many people had for me, a person they did not know at all, but they felt the same towards ALL politicians) - but how do you win back the trust of someone who is jaded? By saying you're going to lie and cheat etc like the big boys? Again, that doesn't seem like a strategy that would win me over, for sure, and I don't think many others who have given up politics as a lost cause because of lying politicians. Take the high road, and win their trust - it may take time - but hell, how far have you come in the last 30 years trying to emulate the Bay St parties? Not much to lose by trying something new for a change.

This is, in part, what earlier posts about 'educating' the people were about. That word or idea does not have negative connotations, as others have stated - it just means that the NDP figures out some principled positions about things that Cdns are concerned about, or other things they SHOULD be concerned about, and start talking about them every chance they get. As I noted earlier, that is how the neocons raise awareness and get support - they get their message figured out, and get with it and with it and with it - sure it's a lot easier for the neocons, as they have the full backing of the MSM for pretty much all they are up to - but it does not help the NDP that they let the neocons and the MSM dictate the debate in the country.

I imagine a lot of voters are not moving to the NDP because currently there is not a lot of difference between the NDP and the Libs, in terms of 'platforms' etc - the NDP talks about controlling debt, and reducing taxes, and other MSM-Fraser Institute 'issues' - meaning that generally there's not a lot to choose between them - imagine though if the NDP decided they wanted to be something different, as they were 50 years ago under Douglas, and David Lewis - a socialist option in a capitalist wasteland, rather than appearing as if they are now in the race to be the 'good guy capitalists' in place of the Libs, opposing the 'bad guy capitalists' in the form of Harper et al...  Drive votes away? I don't think so - I think that would attract votes - as long as they got a good message going and stuck with it - it wouldn't happen overnight, both 'educating' people and gaining their trust take time.

But as I noted again - what has happened the last 40 years since 'the glory' days of the NDP? All downhill, fighting like hell to stay in the same place - but as the world has gone more and more over to capitalism, and the problems associated with capitalism have become ever more evident - where has the socialist voice, the voice truly speaking for the people, gone? Over to the dark side, along with everyone else. When push comes to shove, the 'socialists' fall over, and the voters only have capitalist parties to choose from.

If they NDP wanted to break clear, then standing tall and offering clear choices would be the path, not trying to out-Lib the Libs. Tell Canadians that the capitalists are winning becuase of the totally screwed up FPTP voting system - over and over and over again, every chance they get. Keep reminding Cdns that we have capitalist government, and all the program slashing and tax cutting that entails, because of the unfair voting system, and etc etc. Try some truth - don't go around talking about 'fiscal responsibility' and controlled debt and the rest of it as if they were just another bay st party with the same priorities - if they want votes, spend 2 or 3 or 5 years educating people about the evils of bank-created money, and as soon as people start understanding the massive theft that has occurred under the Libs and Cons - there'll be change.  (as I said - I expect if they did this, they would soon find the MSM time severely curtailed, if not cut off altogether - which may have something to do with their current program - it is very suspicious, I would think, for a socialist-based party to be so silent about this central tenet of capitalism, that is so bad for everyone ...)

I could go on - but that is what I think the NDP needs to do to regain credibility - you seem to suggest that because the other guys are lying scum, the NDP must become lying scum to compete - I could not disagree more. You seem to do a lot of finger pointing - but in the end, like all of us, the NDP are responsible to a very large extent for their own fate - and it is my opinion they could be doing a lot better if they stopped trying to be the third capitalist party, and got back to their 'for the people' roots.

Just an opinion.

I don't give a damn about fairness to political parties. To me, political parties are merely a rather distasteful necessity for the improvement of society.

The unfairness is to the millions of voters whose ballots are flushed down the toilet by the FPTP voting system. The unfairness is to a parliament which is denied the benefit of different approaches to the problems of society by the FPTP voting system. The unfairness is to future generations of Canadians, who will be faced with many hardships which could have been avoided if alternative ideas were given a chance to be heard.

Of course you are correct that PR is no panacea, but it would enable potential solutions to many economic, social, and political problems which will be forever ruled out by the FPTP voting system. I agree with the points made by psmith, and I think the NDP could be doing much more to promote PR without negatively impacting its chances for electoral success in the current, unfair system.

I agree with a lot of the points you make MM, but unfortunately often times the proponents of PR do a really bad job of making their case to the general public. They end up getting side tracked into going on about how FPTP is "unfair" to the Gween party or is unfair to the NDP etc... - the public couldn't care less about what is fair or unfair to PARTIES. They care about what is fair or unfair to to themselves. YOu have to avoid making it sound like PR is just some "revenge of the nerds" scheme to help parties that don't win very many seats under the current system win more seats.

Challenge for all you die-hard PR proponents. Explain to me in 30 seconds how my life as an individual will improve if Canada has PR at the federal level.

Because if I have a local candidate I want to support, I can vote for her/him, but still cast my party ballot the way I want to, according to who I want to be prime minister and/or run the government.  In the latter case, though, I don't want to have to vote for some party hack who got put on the ballot because of a backroom deal.  I still want to see the whites of their eyes too.

(MMPR with open list)

That's a very good argument OO, unfortunately its one that is rarely used by proponents of electoral reform.

Don't forget, those who want to carry on a discussion of provincial PR systems into the federal arena, that the design of the federal House of Commons is constrained by more rules than the provincial ones.  The number of seats for the 4 Atlantic provinces is constrained by their constitutional terms of union with Canada, and there are some other restrictions, I believe on the number of seats for Quebec.

There are electoral reform nerds who can cite chapter and verse on the arrangements they've come up with that satisfy all these constraints and still provide a more proportional outcome.

Preferential voting is all to the good, Stockholm, but it doesn't address regional disparities in support vs. seats, the national unity implications of which still tip me in favour of trying again for MMPR w/open lists, even though I recognize the public turned it down last time in Ontario, and it will be awhile before it can be brought forward again.

Thanks.  I wish it were used more often, as I believe it would be the most successful.

That argument is implicit in every argument in favour of MMP.  Lot's of supporters made that argument.

ON the Walkerton question.  I don't see the Peterson Liberals lining up with Harris's Cons.  

Also, part of the reason for Walkerton was that the competent people were busy trying to cope with the whipsaw changes in the regulatory climate around utilities, especially electricity.  Even if the province migrated right, it would have done so more slowly and more competently.

That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

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That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

There wer e

That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

There were

That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

There were too

That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

There were too many

That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

There were too many messages,

That's true, but from a communications strategic planning perspective, it got totally lost in what the voter actually heard, which I think is Stockholm's point.

There were too many messages, most of which were pitched at way too high-fallutin' a level to make the case one-on-one.

I hate Babble some days.  Sigh.  Mods, can you wipe out my duplicate posts?  Thanks.  (talk about too many messages, eh ;-))

Yes.  All of that.  And more.

It's unfair to Conservative supporters in the GTA.  It's unfair to Liberal voters in Alberta.  It's unfair to NDP supporters in Saskatchewan.  And it's unfair to Green voters everywhere.  It's unfair to federalists who believe deeply in what this country could be when regional, "me first", interests are overrepresented in Ottawa.

But it's more than just unfair.  It's undemocratic and it's wrong.  When half the votes are flushed down the toilet that ought to be everyone's concern, not just Green supporters.  There's a very strong chance that people who have voted in more than 3 elections that at least once, their votes have gone nowhere.  Democracy is rule by the people.  Representative democracy is a delegation of that power to representatives.  When the group in Ottawa don't represent the voters intentions, that's a very serious problem.

We're on the side of angels here.  This shouldn't be such a hard sell but we need a leader.  Someone with courage.  And conviction.  Someone articulate.  And passionate.  Someone who can make politics cool again.  Someone who can connect.

Stockholm, if you're having two hour long debates on this topic, my sympathies to the other party; who is probably prepared to chew a limb off just to escape by the end of it.  The question should be "Do you believe in democracy?"  Because what we have isn't it.

The majority of voters in 2008 voted Liberal, NDP or Green. If we had PR, the Bloc would not hold the balance of power, and the 2008 Coalition would have been able to take power with no Bloc problem.

Agreed 1000%. The Law Commission of Canada report advocated open list with regions like Scotland and Wales (16 and 12 MPs per region). With a region of 14 or so MPs, you'd have nine local MPs and five regional MPs. That's short enough so that an open-list system for the regional MPs would be very feasible.

Unfortunately the Ontario Citizens' Assembly ran out of time before they could get to that point.

Fair Vote Canada is nervous about promoting the Law Commission's model because it is a broad coalition of electoral reformers. FVC doesn't want to repeat the UK Electoral Reform Society's mistake: they are wedded to STV. But someone should promote the Law Commission's model.

Harper would not be in office. The Bloc would not hold the balance of power. (Insert 25 seconds worth of bad things Harper has done.)

RM, it IS frustrating to those (of us) who see that so clearly, but others do not agree.

Thinking back to my old (not very political) office during the Ontario referendum, some people were even willing to accept that the current system wasn't fair, but didn't like the MMP (mainly because of the closed list, although they wouldn't have had those technical terms for it).  One guy said to me very clearly: "it might be fair for parties, but it's not fair for voters, who get no say who they're putting in to office".

Those of us who spent considerable effort listening and talking to people about electoral reform during that referendum have some worthwhile observations that could benefit future endeavours, so don't get too frustrated with us.

The current communications approach of the Fair Vote folks did not work, and was further hampered by the very muddy proposal that was put before voters in that referendum.  Of course that in turn was hampered by the Liberals' and the way they eff-ed around with the process, but the electoral reform advocates participated in it, and so more or less accepted the process warts and all.

Maybe what Stockholm and I are reacting to (although I shouldn't put words in his mouth) is that in spite of their communications approach being a failure, the electoral reform folks continue to stick to it.

"Stockholm wrote:

Harper would not be in office. The Bloc would not hold the balance of power. (Insert 25 second's worth of bad things Harper has done.)"

We don't know that. For all we know if there was PR we would still have a minority Tory government doing all the same bad things. In any case, I think its a waste of time to argue that we should reform the electoral system just to keep a particular party out of power - it just makes it all sound very self-serving and it also guarantees that close to 50% of the electorate would have a knee-jerk reaction of opposing PR. Take the 37.6% of people who voted Tory and add the 10.5% who voted BQ and right away you have almost half the population who voted for parties that you are gloating will be hugely disfavoured by PR. So expect no support there.

I think that you need to come up with a simple argument for why PR is a step forward for Canada irrespective of a person's political leanings. You need arguments to convince Tory and BQ supporters to think its a good idea too. Right now a lot of Liberals also oppose PR because they still have delusions that a Chretien-style minority government is just around the corner!

The reality is that only 15% of Canadians "STRONGLY DISAPPROVE" of Harper. I realize that if you live your whole life in the babble/leftwing social movement sub-culture, you can delude yourself into thinking that there is this massive numbe of people who are obsessed with "stopping Harper" - but the sad reality is that we are only a very small proportion of the population. In fact MOST people who vote Liberal or NDP or BQ or Green are people who don't pay much attention to politics, aren't wild about Harper and would prefer someone else - but they don't stay up all night obsessing over how to get rid of him either - they are just mildly critical.

With FPP, the general rule is:

78% of eligible voters in Canada don't vote for the Harpers.

78% of  eligible voters in Ontario don't vote for Dalton McGuilty or his party either.

And that's just the way they like it on Bay Street.

Another element of electoral system reform is the Preferential Ballot where the voter has the option to rank choices 1,2,3, etc.Also called Instant Run-Off its somewhat like having several rounds of voting as with a leadership race. Tom Flanagan has written in favour of it. Many of the Reform Party's first adherants were for changes like PR.

I know a NDPer who is against this PB, fearing that few Cons or Libs would make the NDP their second choice.

Liberal democrats can sometimes be persuaded to think along more democratic lines. Or at least in the UK if nowhere else.

I'm not so sure about that. I think that Liberals would tend to rank NDP candidates ahead of Tories - especially if the Liberals and NDP made a pact to encourage their supporters to give second preferences to each other. A lot of BQ and Green voters would probably give the NDP second preferences and you might be surprised at how many Tories (esp. out west) hate the Liberals so much that they would preference NDP candidates over Liberals.

And besides, I don't think a citizens assembly would choose PB as an ideal electoral system. For PB to even be choice, they would have to do a Gordon Brown of things and say to them that they have three choices, and the first two options don't count. Brown apparently wanted Britons to decide between switching to PB or sticking with the currently fraudulent system of FPTP.

Alternative vote (FPTP with instant runoff) does not produce proportional results and in some circumstances can produce results more skewed than FPTP.  It still heavily favours established parties and tends to produce a compromise candidate based on the "least least favorite" concept.  (eg Liberal and NDP voters banding together to defeat Conservatives or Liberans and Conservatives banding together to defeat the NDP).  Essentially, it represents an entrenchment of strategic voting, a concept that can result in increased voter alienation.

Single transferrable vote (instant runoff in larger, shared ridings) does produce relatively proportional results.  It results in a government where a very high percentage (up to 90%) of the voters have at least one representative for who they voted.  STV is not liked by party insiders because it has a tendency to lessen the iron grip the party has on the individual representative.

Actually you can't generalize about STV. It all depends on the District Magnitude. STV with three-member districts is not much better than FPTP. Four-seaters are poorly proportional. Five-seaters are better, but not great. Six-seaters, used in Northern Ireland, give pretty decent results. As an example: Belfast City Council has half five-seaters, half six-seaters. The small cross-community liberal Alliance Party holds the balance of power. But all its members are from six-seaters; it doesn't win in five-seaters.

Now, imagine six-MP districts in federal elections in Canada. Okay in Toronto, Peel, York, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, Quebec City region, and maybe Hamilton; that's 108 MPs. As to the other 200 ridings, it wouldn't fly.

Same for open-list MMP. Tough. Bad for the politicians, good for the voters. Even the closed-list versions in Scotland, Germany and New Zealand give more voter choice because you can vote for your party regionally while voting against its dud local candidate, as around 36% of voters in New Zealand tend to do. Germans call this "personalized proportional representation." But the open-list version is even better. As Roy Jenkins and his commissioners said, top-up MPs locally anchored are "more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions."

Wilf always blows me away, the way he can rattle off the stats and international comparisons on this stuff!

Wilf, as you know the BC-STV proposal included district magnitudes from 2 all the way up to 7.  Was it perfect?  No.  Would it have produced much more proportional results than we have today?  Yes.

There are different ways to make BC-STV work.  Add seats, use different DM's.  You don't need 6 seat DM's everywhere.

Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.

In BC, yes. They have only 50,000 people per MLA. But even BC-STV's districts as poorly designed by the EBC would have given Green Party voters barely half the representation they deserved. Federally, it's far harder to fit STV into our geography.

As for variable DMs, that was the basis of the "tullymander" in Ireland: three-seaters in conservative districts, four-seaters in opposition districts. Northern Ireland does indeed use 6-seaters everywhere for their Assembly, because anything else would smell like a tullymander. STV is easily rigged in that way. Tasmania had seven-seaters until the Green Party won the balance of power: the two big parties promptly dropped them to five-seaters, and three of the four Green seats evaporated.

You can get most of the benefits of STV out of open-list MMP.

Wilf's a babbler. And he's good at it. I think a lot of what we rage against in Canada in other threads boils down to our dysfunctional electoral system. Our marathon struggle for democracy continues.

And the FPTP equivalent of tullymander is, of course, gerrymander.  FPTP is open to that today. If you have a professional non-partisan electoral body, you don't hae to worry.  If you don't, the system hardly makes any difference.

Even 'open list' MMP gives a lot of undeserved influence to the parties.  Still, I don't usually criticize MMP because, whatever its flaws, it's still better than FPTP.

And the FPTP equivalent of tullymander is, of course, gerrymander.  FPTP is open to that today. If you have a professional non-partisan electoral body, you don't hae to worry.  If you don't, the system hardly makes any difference.

Even 'open list' MMP gives a lot of undeserved influence to the parties.  Still, I don't usually criticize MMP because, whatever its flaws, it's still better than FPTP.

And the FPTP equivalent of tullymander is, of course, gerrymander.  FPTP is open to that today. If you have a professional non-partisan electoral body, you don't hae to worry.  If you don't, the system hardly makes any difference.

Even 'open list' MMP gives a lot of undeserved influence to the parties.  Still, I don't usually criticize MMP because, whatever its flaws, it's still better than FPTP.

- we need to keep a bit closer to the facts here - 37% of the people**who voted** voted for Harper et al - but it was somewhat closer to 15% of *Canadians* - ~5.2 million votes - likewise adding the Bloc in - about 1.4 million votes - together still under 20% of Canadians.

-- also, talking about keeping people out of power is not all bad - but it can all be framed as you wish - but how about something more along the lines of - Do you remember the 'glory days' of the NDP, when the minority Libs needed NDP support to pass many of the progressive social programs the two Bay st parties have been taking apart for the last 25 years? PR would set up that scenario again, where neither Bay St party could govern without the support of someone, and as the Libs are closer to the NDP, that would be the logical coalition - but with no majority, the Libs would be forced to accept the compromises offered by the NDP - and etc.

-- one more thing to avoid many posts - people talk about communication strategy failures and so on - I haven't yet heard anyone pointing the finger directly at the MSM, but we really need to recognize that the MSM is a central part of our problem, and we need to work on communications strategies that circumvent them as much as possible - the MSM works for Bay St, and against 'we the people' - a large part of 'our' failure the last 30 years has been tied very closely to an apparent failure to recognize and deal adequately with that fact

There's much less problem in recognizing the MSM are a problem, than there is in what to do about it.

And possibly, pointing to the MSM as problem becomes something of a problem itself.... because in talking about MSM as problem, which we do quite a lot of it, it lulls us unwittingly into thinking that we are getting somewhere about what to do about the MSM.... when  actually we do very little discussion of 'what next, here and now'?

Yes, just accepting the status quo as if you cant change it is a problem. IE, limiting yourself to what can we do to successfully get their attention. Doing that not being the problem, its limiting yourself to it that is the problem.

But discussion of circumventing them becomes a drug if its always about the need to do without them, and is always about alternatives that dont work on the what-to-do-now end of things.

There are alternatives to depending on the MSM, that do not entail the long and indirect path of building counter-institutions. And a lot of that has to do with simply having a longer time frame. IE, "here is where we want to go in our communications strategy." We'll start putting it out there. While we are not going to depend on the MSM, when we are successful, they will be picking up the message too.

The difference is the time frame. Current practice is to expect short term pickup of the message, or you dont do it. The longer term developmental framework is that you put the message out there, with just an outline of communications details- adapting along the way both the the message and the method as needed.

Communications is always adapted over time. The difference is that with current practice you do your adapting after you essentially have the 'finished product' of a message picked up.

The longer term developmental approach knows you arent going to start out primarily working through the MSM. And for the NDP there are already plenty of tools for that, the range of them depending on the issues and concerns in play. Mostly, you "just" need a commitment that you will dedicate resources to the continuous adapting and plugging away. Resources that normally you only devote where you can expect relatively short term payoffs. And most of the time it has to be that way, but there can and should be exceptions.

This really isnt about PR in particular, or even about addressing the broader issues of democratic reform. Any further discussion here would probably count as HUGE thread drift. So I'm copying to Educating the Public.

I'd REALLY like someone to explain how you could both be against the existence of political parties but in favour of proportional representation. With no parties we are talking about proportions of what??? Would we have a bunch of individuals running and if Joe Blow gets 20% of the vote than he gets to pick 10 "mini-me" Joe Blows to sit with him in parliament? (Oh but that would be the same thing as a political party).

Its easy to talk about how terrible political parties are. I invite you to observe municipal politics in the city of Toronto where there are no party labels and all 44 councillors do as they please and let us know if you think this is a good model.

I personally relate to the city council a lot more. Also, we all know that the parties are pretty central to city council, even when everyone is pretending that they are not. Smitherman is a case in point. Anyone who doesn't believe that Furious George was not sent to run for mayor as McGuinty's personal hatchet man to put the axe to the TTC expansion agreed to by McGuinty and Miller is an idiot.

Okay peeps. Long thread, closing.