How to get the message out

I was asking this in another thread a while back. I got no help.

Rabble pitches babble as a venue to reach "the world" but it ain't so. No one's paying any attention. As someone opined "this is a private board".

Fair Vote's been at this for over a decade and... how's that working? Actually it's a tortoise race -- slow but sure from what I can see.

As we learned during the assemblies/referenda (or was proven by them anyway -- some of us knew) campaigns are not education opportunies. Heck, we acknowledge that elections are not where issues can be debated.

"Getting a message out" requires a broadcast medium -- newspapers, radio or TV. These are tough to crack. The filters are as strong as the locks.

Babble is a private board in the sense that it's privately owned, rather than being, say, a government initiative.

 

It can be read by ANYONE witn access to the internet.

 

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I'd hate to think we would have to endure a term (or 2) of a Harper majority in order to build the public support necessary to phase out FPTP.

 

Do you think that the overall electorate would blame FPTP for a Harper majority? We've had all kinds of unpopular governments over the years, both federally and provincially, without appear to spark much interest in alternative electoral models.

 

Arguably one of the least popular governments in memory was Mike Harris' provincial Tory government. They mobilized all kinds of groupt to action against them, but when Ontarians were offered the opportunity to vote for MMP, they didn't. I might argue that Cambell's Liberals, in BC, are similarly unpopular, and BC also chose not to switch to PR.

 

Personally, when I voted, I voted YES to PR, but I really don't get the sense that the average voter feels they have a personal stake in it. Certainly if you're a chronic Liberal or a chronic Tory, it's really not a big deal, and might even be against your best interest.

 

Snert wrote:

 Do you think that the overall electorate would blame FPTP for a Harper majority? We've had all kinds of unpopular governments over the years, both federally and provincially, without appear to spark much interest in alternative electoral models.

 Arguably one of the least popular governments in memory was Mike Harris' provincial Tory government. They mobilized all kinds of groupt to action against them, but when Ontarians were offered the opportunity to vote for MMP, they didn't. I might argue that Cambell's Liberals, in BC, are similarly unpopular, and BC also chose not to switch to PR.

 

Yes, I do think a Harper majority would raise public awareness of the limitations of FPTP. I recall the WTF? sentiment after the 1988 election when we got saddled with a U.S-Canada free trade deal that 57% of the electorate voted against. And concern about the back to back Harris majorities did influence the Ontario Liberals decision to study MMP. 

The challenge with getting support for MMP is that it is notoriously difficult to explain. I don't think Ontarians got enough information to make an informed decision about FPTP vs. MMP in the 2007 election.

 

skeiseid wrote:

I seem to remember you were the one who said you didn't care to know about people monitoring the discussions here. (I'm vaguely remembering what you said, OK? I'm very open to correction here.)

Rex could have got those quotes from anywhere -- I don't read things in babble that I don't hear elsewhere.

I do not care about people monitoring the discussions here. And by that I mainly mean, I never tailor my posts for an outside of babble audience. It means little to me that some could be reading.

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Really I'm not very aware of babble's presence in the larger media which was why I was asking about getting some measure of our audience internally and externally. Frankly, I would love to leverage the opinions I voice here into a larger awareness. Some members believe this is a "private" space.

I don't see that our discussions here on electoral reform had any great impact outside rabble. But I could be wrong.

Well, as you saw in the canning thread, there are watchers, and results can and do happen, one just never knows.

And I do read things in babble that I do not elsewhere , and when I do see things outside of babble being reported, that we have noted here, we usually have dissected it and it is only just making the news.

And no IMV, Rex's words were taken directly from here.

Perhaps the effect of the discussion on PR here, are what prompted people to vote NO in BC? ;)

Canapathy wrote:

I intended this thread to be a discussion on strategies to get any message out in today's day and age.

That's what we've been discussing.

When I got interested in electoral reform it was in frustration, not with respect to not getting "my" party elected but with the paralyzing interia and ineffectiveness of government to deal with the eco-economy. The bst reason to effect electoral and democratic reform is to get a government that will act for us to achieve a sustainable civilization. 

Recently I suggested that we might join forces and leverage our shared need for change. Solidarity in advocay on a multitude of fronts?

Works for whisky...

remind wrote:

People are resistent to change, however if they got facts, figures and a well thought out PR model, with no personalities attached to it, one never knows.

I voted No, because, in part, of one particular yes proponent, and that I do not like STV as a PR model.

Know that I should not base my decisions in part on such things, but I was waivering and that poster tipped the scales against me voting Yes. I figured if such a person was so deluded about other things, they were lacking credibility on STV.

 

That wasn't me I hope.

STV is a very misunderstood system. It all starts with the academics who confused the method of aggregating the vote lists with the core design of the system and named it for the wrong feature. That confusion persisted throuh the education of the assemblies and the discussions here. Wilf's "play-by-plays" of transfers is the obvious example of the focus with STV being on the wrong thing.

Oh well, the milk is spilled and horses have left the barn.

I remember that one of the arguments about the MMP model put forward in the Ontario referendum is that large swaths of the province -- Windsor, Thunder Bay -- would be left without an MPP representing their interests in the legislature. Was there any truth to this?

I can understand why voters want some assurance of regional geographic affiliation in their elected officials -- e.g., northern ontarians want to elect people who will advocate for jobs in the forest industry, etc. But at the more micro riding level what are we getting beyond Xmas calendars, the occasional newsletter and ombudsman-type constituency work of varying quality? And with party discipline and power in the  more senior levels of government becoming ever more centralized at the PM/Premier's office, individual members are  less influential. This is to say that I am open to other options.

In any representation-by-population system (and that's a given) there are going to be variations in riding size based on population density. In Canada, the range is pretty wide. For the same number of representatives, a change to either MMP or STV would  produce larger ridings. With MMP these larger ridings would be directly represented by just one member and indirectly by list reps based on the popular vote and the design of the system. In STV the ridings would be larger but that riding would be represented by a dedicated team of representatives based on the popular vote -- i.e. the representation would be fairly proportional within the riding. National (provincial) proportionality would be derived from that "local" proportionality.

So to answer your question... the answer is "no".

 

By the way I'm watching CityTV just now and Andrew Coyne is on promoting a debate next week (I think) -- Is Democracy Broken? to be held at the Jane Mallett Theatre in Toronto.

They're holding a poll too on that question. I'm off to vote!!

So I voted.

The vote so far at the moment is 70% yes.

 

http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews

Can someone explain how under  a charter challenge the SCC is likely to find FPTP to be  a violation of rights?

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I remember that one of the arguments about the MMP model put forward in the Ontario referendum is that large swaths of the province -- Windsor, Thunder Bay -- would be left without an MPP representing their interests in the legislature. Was there any truth to this?

No. First, is the "mixed" part of MMP. There would still have been geographical ridings and representation (although less ridings because the Citizens Assembly wouldn't propose adding more seats to the Legislature).

Second, it would have been left to the parties to develop their lists using whatever democratic (or undemocratic) means they chose. Unfortunately, what should have been a challenge for party activists to promote democratic practices within their parties for list selection, turned into a complete surrender to their own party bosses. They did not trust their OWN parties to develop democratic lists, rejected democratic reform and then helped poison the well for the rest of the electorate. 

I find it interesting that the EI argument put forward by NDP supporters in another thread - let's start with Harpers proposal and then try to improve it - was not applied to electoral reform. Why not start with the proposed MMP or STV models and then tweak once its approved.  In my opinion, voting in favor of first past the post does a disservice to voters and citizens. I would guess that most NDPers in Ontario voted in support (except in the north perhaps). BC must be a different story as there are really only two parties and people eventually tire of one and elect the other allowing both parties to take advantage of the inequities built into FPTP. The BCNDP opposed reform but I don't think it has anything to do with the model. 

And the poster who said something about campaign time not being the time to begin the education work is bang on in my opinion. It was "given" to the voters by the government as in Australia, BC and Ontario and failed. In New Zealand, It was demanded after several years of on the ground awareness raising by reformers. At least that's how it was explained to me. 

Hi Wilf

Did you vote on the "Is democracy broken?" poll?? In the end (just now) it was 2 to 1 in favour. 65% or something -- that would have won the referenda eh!

Going to the forum next week??

skeiseid wrote:

Hmmm...That's not quite right either.

We were talking about the misrepresentation of STV and Wilf as one of the vocal gurus of electoral reform played a major role in perpetuating the myths. He wasn't alone. And I argued with lots of people about this. But Wilf and I have a history -- a very public history -- of good faith, good natured disagreement on babble. 

Don't hold that against me.

Wasn't, but am going to shortly, as you just did it again, obliquely inferring Wilf played a negative role that was a major one. ;)

One related phrase may be something like "equal and effective votes". FPTP does not provide that. Then there's always the "taxation without representation" angle although not sure that's a SCC angle. 

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The courts have already commented on that I believe. It has to do with the right to have an expectation that your vote should be as effective in terms of participation in the democratic process as the next guy's. This is absolutely not true with first past the post.

 

Consider the hypothetical example of a candidate who receives, say, 100 votes. I'm hard put to think of any system that is going to guarantee those 100 voters that their vote will count in any meaningful way. So it would seem to me that if the courts were to decide in favour of the right you mention, it wouldn't ensure any flavour of PR that I'm familiar with. And once it's at the level of a "right", those 100 can't simply be dismissed.

skeiseid wrote:

I guess you're gonna have to hold that against me then. Oh well.

Seems so, as oblique smears are just the same as in your face smears, and that never works well with holy than thou professions of not doing such. ;)

But, having said that, I will still read your posts with interest, as they are for the most part informative and thought provoking. :D

"Respectful provocation", will have to remember that one. :D

In all seriousness now, you are a respectful and thoughtful poster who is a great asset to babble. And indeed a person cares a great deal about the functioning of Canada's parliamentary system. If only the majority of Canadians could  access such in a broad way, or indeed wanted to.

Did anyone else see the little debate on Citytv? And the poll?

Around 65% of the respondents said that they felt democracy in Canada was broken.The ills of FPTP are clear but not articulated well to the general public. Many probably don't realize that it doesn't have to be this way.

The assemblies and referenda were (very likely) establishment excerises in heading off reform. In BC it almost backfired. In Ontario it went exactly as planned. Now the "party line" in the government is that "the people have spoken".

Few people who voted in the referenda truly understood what it was all about. The results are, therefore, specious. They cannot be used to draw any conclusions -- despite what the politicians (and the media for some strange reason <--sarcasm) claim.

What's needed now is some way to express the will and intent of the people to reform democracy and convince the politicians to listen or find a way to force the politicians to make progressive change. 

I'm nt sure how to do the former but the latter could very well be accomplished through the Charter challenge.

 

If Rex Murphy misspelled any of the words he spoke, it's proof he stole them from me.

I want some royalties if he borrowed any lines from me...or a personally engraved apology.   =:) 

SCB4 wrote:

I remember that one of the arguments about the MMP model put forward in the Ontario referendum is that large swaths of the province -- Windsor, Thunder Bay -- would be left without an MPP representing their interests in the legislature. Was there any truth to this?

That wasn't exactly the problem. With 107 ridings becoming 90, every group of six would become five slightly larger ones. No, the problem was that the 39 "top-up" MPPs would have been elected from province-wide lists, so that the North might or might not have elected a couple of them. So the North would lose two ridings, with no guarantee of electing two "top-up" MPPs.

When the Ontario NDP endorsed proportional representation in 2002, it specified that the "top-up" lists would be regional, and Northern Ontario would be a region. The model designed by the Ontario Citizens' Assembly, which needed another three weekends to finish designing their model, was unsaleable in the North, and indeed was progressively less saleable as the distance from Toronto increased. (For example, Conservative York Region was more in favour than Liberal/NDP/Green Ottawa.)

A related defect was that "closed lists" were misinterpreted as parties appointing MPPs. In truth, "top-up" MPPs would be less personally accountable under province-wide closed lists than under an open-list regional model where all candidates would face the voters, and voters would vote for the regional candidate of their party they preferred, as well as having a vote for local MPP.

SCB4 wrote:

I can understand why voters want some assurance of regional geographic affiliation in their elected officials -- e.g., northern ontarians want to elect people who will advocate for jobs in the forest industry, etc.

Exactly. See this example identifying the regions.

skeiseid wrote:

Going to the forum next week??

What forum is that?

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The assemblies and referenda were (very likely) establishment excerises in heading off reform. In BC it almost backfired. In Ontario it went exactly as planned. Now the "party line" in the government is that "the people have spoken".

 

Uh, but the people did speak. I wish they'd spoken differently too, but I don't see any help in picking sour grapes.

 

I really don't buy the simultaneous claims that people are fed up, people think democracy is broken, people want change BUT when that change was offered to them on a silver platter, when all they had to do was mark an "X" in the "YES" box, it was all too much for them and so they all marked the "NO" box instead. That just doesn't wash. Trust me, if the referendum was "Do you want to pay less in taxes, but receive the same services" the tally would have been 99% YES, 1% NO, with no abstainers. When people really, genuinely want something and you offer it to them, they'll typically take it.

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To say "Ontario has spoken" is being disingenuous.

 

So then if Ontario had voted "YES", despite, as you say, having a very limited grasp of the issues, would you argue that the YES vote is similarly uninformed and (presumably) similarly illegitimate?

 

Here's the thing: if voters are, as you and others suggest, starving for change, crying out for alternatives, fed up with the current system... you don't think they might have taken five minutes out of their day to try to understand the system that brings them such dissatisfaction? Heck, if they're that ignorant of what an MP is, or how the HoC works, why shouldn't I assume that their dissatisfaction stems from ignorance, rather than from a broken system?

 

I really can't blame the electorate's ignorance on anyone but the electorate. It's all just a google away, and if the electorate can't spend five minutes reading about the change that they're allegedly desperate for then they don't deserve that change, IMHO. They say 'you get the government you deserve'... I'd add to that that you get the electoral system you deserve, too.