Referendum Ontario Oct 10, 2007 - MMP Here We Come

More news and opinions on MMP:

Why the Status Quo is REALLY Scared of MMP - by Idealistic Pragmatist
Politicians will have to learn to focus more on policy and compromise and getting things done instead of trying to nay-say the other party. They should be doing positive things to bring about benefits to the public instead of playing games and getting nothing done. MMP would make politicians actually work.

And, a point that is raised regarding people who argue that proportional representation doesn't work:

"In places that have MMP, though, the norm isn't single-party governments at all. Instead, those places tend to have multi-party majority coalition governments. This means that the party that gets the most seats chooses a coalition partner to form a government with, allowing the two parties together to add up to more than 50% of the seats. After this happens, the parties reconcile their party platforms through compromise and work together as a single government to put their ideas into practice. This isn't some crazy concept that's only used by a few countries, either--this is the way government works in nearly all of the world's parliamentary democracies."

The Case Against First Past the Post

Andrew Coyne's article from The National Post.

These anomalies and distortions are reflections of what goes on at the riding level: The winner is not the candidate who receives a majority of the votes cast, but simply the one who comes in first place. With four candidates, it can be done with as little as 25% of the vote plus one. The other 75% of the voters are rewarded for doing their civic duty with?bupkus. All in all, between one-half and two-thirds of all the votes cast in a given election are, in this sense, wasted.

The Worry About List Candidates in MMP

Many who don't like the idea of MMP, don't for the main reason that they think that the List candidates are just going to be hand-picked by the party leader. But, why would the party leader do that if it isn't attractive to the voters? It stands to reason that the parties will pick their List candidates in a similar democratic fashion as they pick the local candidates.

Here is an excellent post from The Fifth Column about this.
"The law (and proposed law) is in fact no different as far as the selection of local and list candidates. It is up to the parties to use democratic selection methods and up to the voters to judge them on the methods they use."

Like We've Been Saying - Support the Troops, Bring Them Home.

Independent reports in the past have shown that the Afghani prime minister supports removing foreign troops from combat and increasing their reconstructive roles.

Today, we see that the recent speech by Karzai to the Canadian Parliament was WRITTEN BY THE CANADIAN MILITARY! Who would have thought? Read here in the Toronto Star.

The NDP says it has documents that show the Canadian military effectively wrote Afghan President Hamid Karzai's speech to Parliament last year. ....

The party's defence critic, Dawn Black, says the papers indicate Karzai's address was an "elaborately staged political stunt." ...

"What Canadians heard was not the voice of the Afghan people, but the talking points of the [Canadian] Department of National Defence," Black said.

Hopefully, the MSM will cover this issue appropriately so the Canadian public knows what the Afghani people really want.

Support our troops - bring them home.