Saturday, September 29, 2007

Proportional representation sucks (more than FPTP)

The closer the Ontario referendum looms the more frantically Andrew Coyne pumps out columns slamming FPTP and praising PR. You’d think his life depended on it.

Father Raymond J. De Souza argued in a recent column that the while the FPTP system is broken, PR isn’t the fix.

Today Coyne has yet another column - this one with a headline referring to PR opponents as "fear mongers".

George Jonas summarizes and, adding an argument, takes sides :

[My bold]
Be it resolved that our current first-past-the-post-system sucks. There was
never a clearer, better argued and more convincing case made out for any resolution than that offered by the mighty pen of Coyne. It carried the day -- until next morning it collided with the mighty pen of de Souza.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a CBC commentator, I think that one man's free election is another man's coup d'etat. How to decide? Let's see which countries use mixed-member proportional representation (PR.) That should tell us which country Ontario might come to resemble if we replaced its present system.

Germany? Hmm. Italy? Hmm. Mexico? Hmm squared. Bolivia? Hmm cubed. Hungary? You must be kidding. That's where I came from.

Lesotho? Er, refresh my memory. Ah, Africa, OK.

What? You can't be serious. Vene-bloodyzuela has PR?

Thank you, Andrew. Not today.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how you can reach that conclusion; how is a system that rewards a party that gets a minority of the vote with ALL of the power any better than a system that rewards a party with the representation than they actually DESERVE?