Here's a great summary of all the pros and cons of the Mixed-Member Proportional system proposed for Ontario.
As the discussion over the proposed system goes on, the main argument against the system is that party list candidates may be chosen by the party executives and voters won't be able to break the slate. I agree, it would be much better if the Citizens' Assembly was given few more weeks so they could design an open list system, which would give voters the option to choose what candidates from a selected party they'd want to support.
At the same time, as Australian experience shows, less than 5% of the voters choose to "break the slate", rather than accepting the list as it is. Also, with the way the party lines are drawn, it's unlikely that a party allows someone whose opinion deviates from the party platform to be its list candidate. And finally, even if we can't have intra-party competition, at the very least, MMP makes it easier for us to vote our conscience. Instead of looking for acceptable candidates on the leading party list, voters are free to support a smaller party, that actually represent their views. I believe this evens things out.
Another advantage of the proposed system - is that it lets the newbies in. Political reforms won't be possible if we have no choice but keep electing the same old guys just because we find others to be even worse. If we want things to be done differently, we need a system that gives fair representation to broad range of political parties. Yes, we may disagree with one small party or another, but that doesn't mean people we disagree with don't deserve to be represented.
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3 comments:
Great post, that shows why Ontario voters of all political stripes should vote for MMP on October 10!
The Assembly didn't need additional weeks to design a system with an open list. Through small group and plenary discussions about the issue the members came to a concensus to choose a closed list.
...from the Citizens' Assembly detailed background report entitiled, Democracy at Work - available from their web site...
"In an MMP system, parties nominate candidates to their lists. Those candidates are eligible to be elected through the party vote.
The MMP system designed by the Assembly uses a “closed list” – the type of list used in almost every MMP jurisdiction.
Parties list their candidates in the order they want them to be elected and voters can’t change this order (unlike “open lists”).
This provides a measure of predictability for voters. For example, if a party wins five list seats, the first five eligible candidates
on its list, after removing the names of people who won in local elections, will be elected to the legislature.
In a closed list, the names of parties, as opposed to the names of candidates, appear on the party side of the ballot. In
open list systems where voters are given an opportunity to vote for a party or select a candidate from a party list, the research
shows that a majority of voters prefer to vote for a party and that the candidate-option often has limited effect on who is elected.
A closed list, with the ballot listing only the parties, also makes the ballot simpler for voters. With a provincial tier, an
open list ballot would have to include the names of numerous candidates for each party.
With a closed list, there is a greater likelihood that members elected from the list will come from different regions of the
province and will include more women and others currently under-represented in the legislature. This is because the list cannot
be re-ordered and because parties will have an incentive to ensure that their list appeals to as many voters as possible. In New
Zealand, for example, the representation of women and other under-represented groups in Parliament has increased since the
introduction of its MMP system, which uses a closed list.
Well, I doubt the Citizen's Assebly report would actually say that the Assembly simply didn't have the time to develop something more complex than a single province-wide closed list. So the quote you provided just explains how the closed-list system works and outlines a few arguments in favor of the closed-list MMP.
But I bet the time constraint too had played its role. Just as it did in BC, where the Citizen's Assembly was inclining to propose open-list MMP but didn't have the time to discuss all the details, so they ended up choosing STV.
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