It's election time in Ontario

The NDP is going to vote down the budget. The details are in an email Andrea Horwath sent out:

Email

Friends,

It is time for a change.

The Liberal budget is a mad dash to escape scandals by promising the moon and the stars.

The Liberals have wasted billions on scandals and waste, like the $1.1 billion cancellation of the gas plants.

It’s time they show some respect for people and their hard-earned money.

After ten years in power, the Liberals are desperate to promise everything they can. I’m not the kind of woman that believes those kinds of promises. I come from a simple place. Promising is good, but making good on promises is better.

This Liberal budget is not a solid plan. These are desperate moves from desperate people.

The Liberals are out of touch. This budget includes $2.5 billion in new, no-strings attached giveaways to the largest corporations. It does nothing to end the handouts to companies that ship jobs overseas.

Instead of cleaning up the mess in our electricity system and getting hydro rates under control, they want to drive up rates by selling our hydro system in a redo of the Conservatives’ privatization mistakes. The case for selling off public assets has not been made: it’s like burning the furniture to heat the house.

They have not acted on the priorities I hear about from families like jobs, hydro rates, making life more affordable, and making government more accountable.

They are unwilling to deliver on their promises. Last year they promised a Financial Accountability Officer. One year later, that office still sits empty. This budget has over 70 promises — just waiting to be broken.

Ontario New Democrats will not being voting for this budget.

It is time for a change. It is time for a government that stands up for middle class families. It is time for a government that makes sense.

Best,

Andrea Horwath
Leader, Ontario NDP

Ranked ballot voting in a nutshell

Ranked ballot voting modifies our existing system by simply making MPs earn their seats with a majority of votes.

This is the voting system parties use to elect their leaders. It’s even how Oscar winners are decided.

2011 Election

The 2011 election shows the fallacy of our primitive voting system, First-Past-the-Post.

Vote splitting between Liberals, NDP and Greens allowed Harper to win dozens of opposition ridings on a minority of votes. This is why his 40% of the vote allowed him to win 54% of the seats (“false majority”) and 100% of the power (“winner take all”.)

RBV ends these distortions and ensures voters don’t get saddled with politicians and governments they don’t want and didn’t vote for.

RBV Process

Another name for ranked ballot voting is instant runoff voting.

With plain runoff voting, there are a number of voting rounds. At the end of each round, the lowest scoring candidate is removed from the ballot, and another round of voting is held. This process continues until a candidate wins with a majority. (The last possible round has only two candidates left.)

With RBV (instant runoff voting,) voters rank candidates by number which determines their vote on each instant round — their vote goes to their highest ranking candidate still on the ticket.

This ensures MPs are elected with a majority. This stops vote splitting and allows for guaranteed “Anyone But Conservative” voting.

Limited proportional

RBV approximates proportional results for large parties like the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP (parties get approximately the same percent seats they got in votes.)

But because federal votes are not distributed, small parties, like the Greens, have a hard time winning seats because their votes are stretched thinly across the country.

Small party leverage

But RBV is not the disaster that FPP is for small parties — who end up with nothing. With RBV, alternative votes are very important.

Under RBV, the Liberals and NDP have to court Green voters with green policies to get their alternative choices. This gives Green voters leverage they don’t have under FPP.

RBV also moderates the debate. Polarizing politics are punished because extremists like Harper loose out on alternative votes.

Conclusion

RBV is a minor upgrade of our existing system, simply changing the ballot from single-choice to ranked. But this small step in voting reform is actually a giant leap forward for democracy.

Proportional Representation (true voting) in a nutshell

Proportional Representation is a complicated name for a simple idea: that parties should get the same percent of seats they got in votes.

In the last election, under First-Past-the-Post, Harper got 40% of the votes and 54% of the seats, giving him 100% of the power.

In a real democracy, an actual majority of voters is represented in government, not a 40% minority party. FPP produces an insane distortion of the people’s will. Harper only earned 40% of the seats. That’s how many he should’ve received.

True Voting

A better name for PR might be “true voting”: voters get what they actually voted for!

Since people vote for a party and a person to represent them, there are three ways to get true voting:

• Party-list PR: With this system, parties put out lists of candidates who will get seats the people award parties. These candidates are scrutinized by the people and the media before the election and affect how people vote. Parties put out lists in each province to ensure regional representation. This is the most widely used kind of true voting.

• Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP): This is a combination of our existing system and party-list PR. People vote for a local candidate associated with a party, and a party itself. The winning candidates get seats. Additional seats are awarded to parties to ensure they get the same percent of seats they got in votes.

• Single Transferable Vote (STV): This system creates large ridings that have many MPs instead of one. People rank candidates — who belong to a party — by number. If there are 5 members per riding, a party that gets 20% of the vote gets 1 seat; 60%, 3 seats. This is a great way to get a local representative you voted for. Over all, parties get the number of seats they earned.

Conclusion

Whatever system of PR we use, we will get much better regional representation than the distorted landslide results we get under FPP. True voting will also make your vote really count.

True voting will put an end to the minority-party dictatorships we have to suffer through under FPP. And it will save Canada from extremists like Stephen Harper who have vowed to change our country beyond recognition — against the will of Canadians.

Sustainable economy: Salvation gets cheap

Paul Krugman wrote an important column on the economy and environmental sustainability titled, Salvation gets cheap.

This is based on the IPCC’s recent report that suggests a green technological revolution is happening, especially in solar energy which has dropped 75% since 2008.

Sustainable market economy

Krugman debunks the fallacy that economic growth is tied to pollution and resource extraction.

Fact is, it’s possible to have an economy that is based 100% on renewable energy and recyclable materials. We just need to develop the right government regulations.

Under such an economy, we can have indefinite economic growth (increasing individual wealth) without any adverse effects.

Centrist system

What’s required is the centrist, Keynesian economic system we used in the post-WW2 era.

It works in two ways: first “big government” spending on infrastructure projects and social programs creates jobs and redistributes wealth so all segments of society benefit from GDP growth (wealth creation) and productivity growth (machines doing more of the work.)

Second, strong regulations and infrastructure spending on green energy projects and mass transit make the economy increasingly sustainable.

Free-market nihilism

The real threat to humanity is the right-wing, free-market ideology that has plagued us over the past 30 years. It’s based on economic anarchy: that is, people acting on greed and self-interest somehow balances itself out. This nihilist philosophy is not only self-serving, it’s self-destructive.

Conclusion

In order for society to act responsibly we need the right economic system to govern our mass behaviors. The centrist Keynesian system gives us the right tools to clean up our act while preserving our democratic freedoms.

Krugman

Other things equal, more G.D.P. [economic growth] tends to mean more pollution. ... But other things don’t have to be equal. There’s no necessary one-to-one relationship between growth and pollution.

People on both the left and the right often fail to understand this point. ... On the left, you sometimes find environmentalists asserting that to save the planet we must give up on the idea of an ever-growing economy; on the right, you often find assertions that any attempt to limit pollution will have devastating impacts on growth. But there’s no reason we can’t become richer while reducing our impact on the environment. ...

The sensible position ... has always been that ... if we give corporations and individuals an incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they will respond.

So is the climate threat solved? Well, it should be. The science is solid; the technology is there; the economics look far more favorable than anyone expected. All that stands in the way of saving the planet is a combination of ignorance, prejudice and vested interests.

In 2015, let’s make Canada Harper-proof!

Most Canadians appalled by the Harper Government don’t realize that this is just the beginning. Since 1935, the only times the conservative vote was united was during the reigns of Mulroney and Harper.

Before Mulroney, the conservative vote was split between the PC and Social Credit parties; after Mulroney and before Harper, between PC and Reform.

Natural governing party

So unless the Wildrose party goes federal, the Conservative party is Canada’s natural governing party.

And while Harper had a hard time getting moderate conservatives to vote for him, if Jim Prentice becomes leader, he could easily put together back-to-back majorities like Mulroney. The fact is the total conservative vote is 40%, and a fake majority is only 39%.

Small window of opportunity

In 2015, we will have a small window of opportunity to fix our broken voting system. Odds are the opposition will form a minority government. If we fail to take action, the Cons will likely be back in power for another decade as early as 2017.

Two kinds of voting reform

There are two ways to reform our voting system.

1. Proportional Representation: ensures parties get the same percent of seats they got in votes.

2. Ranked ballot voting: makes MPs earn their seats with a majority. This stops vote splitting and guarantees “Anyone But Con” voting.

If we had either system, odds are Harper never would’ve came to power.

Let Canadians choose

The only way to succeed in voting reform is to let Canadians decide: that is, with a three-way referendum.

We need to put all three options on the ballot — PR, RBV and our existing system First-Past-the-Post. Then hold a runoff vote (with the top two options) to ensure one option is chosen by a majority of Canadians.

(We can also put all three PR systems on the ballot to be chosen the same way: party list, Mixed-Member Proportional and Single Transferable Vote.)

Failed two-option referendums

If we let a citizens’ assembly choose for us, the choice is certain to be rejected by voters like it was in 4 provincial PR referendums.

It takes democracy, to get democracy. It is self-defeating attempting to foist one’s preferred voting system on Canadians.

Leading party means nothing in a democracy

Canadians tend to view elections like horse races. The leading horse wins the race and has the right to power.

Of course, what this impression leaves out is the fact that political parties arbitrarily divide the political spectrum.

So should a united left-leaning party have an advantage over a divided right? Should a united right-leaning party have an advantage over a divided left? Either way is senseless.

Majority rule — real and imagined

The next thing to take into consideration is that democracy means rule by the people. The will of the people is determined by a majority vote.

In Canada we often dole out 4-year dictatorships to 40% minority parties and call it a “majority.” But in reality, it is the opposite of a majority and the opposite of democracy — because the actual majority gets excluded from government.

No special privilege

In the rest of the developed world, the party that represents the largest block of voters gets no unearned advantage or special privilege.

In Australia, for example, there is one left-leaning party and 4 right-leaning parties. If they used our primitive voting system, First-Past-the-Post, the left-leaning party would win perpetual “majority” governments.

But they upgraded their voting system — actually a century ago — so voters would decide which party (or parties) govern, not foolishness.

Voting reform or bust

So unless you want the Conservative party to have a huge unearned advantage and change Canada beyond recognition, voting reform should be your top priority.

Unless we fix our mess of a democracy in 2015, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Latest polling results

According to ThreeHundredEight.com:

Based on these seat projections, if Canada was a democracy, the Liberals and NDP would form a multi-party majority government that would serve out the entire 4-year term.

But because we have a horse race instead of a democracy, the Cons would get the first shot at forming the government. If they failed, the Liberals could try to hobble together an unstable “minority” government that would fall apart in 2 to 3 years.

It’s time to chose real democracy. Either proportional representation or ranked ballot voting will put an end to the foolishness. It will also stop the Cons from winning dozens of opposition ridings due to vote splitting.

Canada's senate completes the perfect farce

Most people’s understanding of the senate is second-hand knowledge. They believe it plays an important role in the legislative process providing much-needed “sober second thought.” But nothing could be further from the truth.

Aristocratic veto

When John A MacDonald coined the phrase back in the 19th century, democracy was still in its infancy. (Check our Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address written around the same time.) What most people don’t realize is that he was saying upper-class aristocrats should have a veto over democratic legislation — to keep the unruly masses from getting too unruly.

That’s why senators were appointed, instead of being elected. (Why people think appointing senators is a good idea today is anyone’s guess…)

From aristocrats to partisan hacks

But after WW2 — a war where many Canadians gave their lives fighting for democracy — an aristocratic senate no longer had a place. That’s when the senate took on its modern form: an institution polluted with partisan patronage appointments, making it the most corrupt democratic institution in the developed world.

Real work of reviewing legislation

The real work of reviewing legislation is done in Commons committees by politicians put there by voters. The only thing wrong with this process is that we absurdly dole 4-year dictatorships to arbitrary minority parties who can bully and overrule committees.

This is because we still have a primitive 19th century voting system — where as developed countries ensure an actual majority of voters is represented in government (i.e., literal democracy.)

Broken watch

The senate, of course, does not remedy this situation any (unless you think a broken watch is useful because it tells the right time twice a day.) It is arbitrary itself.

Liberal and Conservative prime ministers stack the senate back and forth to majorities in their party’s favor. This makes the senate either an ornate rubber stamp or a hallowed hindrance to democratic government.

Supreme Court completes the perfect farce

The senate was never a democratic institution. So the Supreme Court ruling makes perfect sense in that virtually no amount of democratic will can get rid of the absurdity now.

If insanity is the criteria, it’s perfectly logical that all 10 provinces must agree to abolish the undemocratic senate, when all 10 provinces weren’t required to sign onto the 1982 Constitution Act.

The senate completes the perfect farce that is our loony-tunes version of democracy:

• We are the only developed country with unelected senators.

• We are a bilingual, multicultural county stuck with some other country’s monarch as our head of state.

• We dole out absolute power to minority parties shutting the actual majority out of government.

• People get hysterical about amending the constitution eliminating a very important function of our “constitutional democracy.”