Corporate media conspiracy against voting reform

Jeffery Simpson laments that Harper is only going to focus on 10 percent of voters over the next 2 years until the next election. Harper is at 30% in the polls and he needs 40% for another “majority.” So he couldn’t care less what the 60% super-majority thinks, he just needs to fool the 10%.

Yet in the entire column Simpson doesn’t say one word about the real problem: our primitive voting system, First-Past-the-Post. This doles out absolute power to 40% minority parties excluding the vast majority from government — which is the literal opposite of democracy.

Fact is, 91% of developed countries have upgraded their voting systems to ensure an actual majority is represented in government. Yet the only time the corporate media talks about voting reform is to rant it will destroy the country.

Conspiracy theory

I’m not one big on conspiracy theories. I believe Oswald killed Kennedy. I believe the hijacked planes brought down the WTC buildings. But here it is painfully obvious the upper-class business community — which controls the major media — has an agenda to suppress the voting reform movement.

Take, for example, the senate scandal. It spawned countless columns from pundits who weren’t afraid to call for senate reform. Yet whenever pundits talk about the ill effects of vote splitting, they are forbidden to even mention the cause — First-Past-the-Post — or the solution: voting reform, which the rest of the developed world has adopted.

Why?

The motive is simple enough: it’s much easier for businessmen to lobby and influence a single-party dictatorship than a multi-party democratic government. FPP also creates a de facto two party system, which is easier for corporations to control.

Conclusion

In order to make Canada a real democracy it’s up to us in the social media. The corporate media — which endorsed a Harper majority in 2011 by 88% — has other designs on our country.

We have a small window of opportunity in 2015. The Liberals currently support ranked ballot voting. This is a good first step in voting reform that will be a giant leap forward for democracy in Canada. If we had it in 2011, Harper would already be gone.