While I've been studying electoral systems for decades now, I only today had a chance to look at the website of the NO MMP campaign. I thought I would go through their major points and discuss why I disagree with them.
Disclosure: I donated $202.0 to the VoteForMMP campaign last evening. They have donation amounts that are multiples of $10.10 which is based on the date of the referendum (October 10), and I gave 20 times that. I have also been donating $20/month to Fair Vote Canada for a few years, putting my money where my mouth is.
It is ironic, although unsurprising, that some of the reasons why they are opposed to MMP are the very reasons why I support MMP. It also didn't surprise me to find that one visible strong opponent to MMP is Sheila Copps. I have bumped into her a few times in the context of copyright, culture and telecommunications policy. She is likely one of the most closed minded people I have met, and someone far more interested in pushing her personal agenda than listening to the interests of constituents.
Our referendum choice is between a custom "Made in Ontario" version of Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) and the current "as use in Ontario" First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system. While we may all have your own favourite electoral system that is different (I do), this is not what we are deciding in Ontario next month.
The Ontario-MMP proposal has improvements over the German MMP system in that we have separated the vote for the person and the party, allowing for better choice in Ontario than what is available in Germany.
The Ontario-FPTP system is also different than FPTP operating in other jurisdictions. Nunavut and the North West Territories use FPTP, but since they don't have parties the problems we have in Ontario caused by the largely incompatible mixture of FPTP and parties doesn't exist. While India also uses FPTP, their political system is so diverse with regional parties that they also don't have the problems we do.
It is false to believe that if we have some mythical "third option" that we think is better that this should mean that we should vote against MMP. It is just as likely that we would move from MMP to some mythical "better system" than to move from FPTP to some "better system". The scaremongering from the "no to MMP" camp is just that, scaremongering.
This means that you should only be deciding whether the proposed Ontario-MMP system is better than the current Ontario-FPTP system.
Lets go through the highlights on the home page of the opponents to Ontario-MMP.
Main Objection:
To achieve the single goal of proportionality, the proposed MMP system shifts power from the local voter in ridings across Ontario to the power brokers at Queen's Park.
As I will explain below, they have this main objection backwards. It is partly the fact that the Ontario-MMP system reduces the influence of the power brokers at Queen's Park that I am a proponent of the Ontario-MMP system.
While you may agree with some of their objections, it is important to adequately understand both the Ontario-MMP and Ontario-FPTP systems to determine which one preforms better under the criteria you have set. Just because they have claimed that the Ontario-FPTP system better performs under a specific objection, does not make this fact.
This type of political misdirection is common with some politicians. They state some objection in a manner which falsely suggest that their opponents are proposing something different.
Specifically MMP would bring:
17 fewer local ridings, covering more territory, with less contact with your local representative
Ontario had 130 ridings until Mike Harris reduced that to 103 in 1996 with the Fewer Politicians Act. This was a government who had a false majority, meaning less than 60% of people in Ontario had voted for the government which unilaterally made this radical change to the parliament. There was no public debate or referendum on this radical change.
Population changes increased that number to the 107 that are being elected in this election.
Other substantial electoral changes have been made by false-majority governments without referendum or public debate. The McGuinty government passed legislation in 2004 for fixed election dates, radically changing the method used to decide when elections would be held.
While I may agree or disagree with various changes to the size, timing and how governments are formed in Ontario, most of these changes have been made by false majority governments without a referendum or public debate. In this case the change requires a super-majority (60%) in a referendum, a hurtle many many orders of magnitude higher than required by previous changes.
The suggestion that there would be less contact with local politician in the Ontario-MMP is also backwards.
By having at-large members you can allow cabinet be formed out of some of those members, reducing the number of ridings that effectively have no local member because their member is busy being a cabinet minister. An at-large member from the same party can also be assigned to assist a cabinet minister handle local riding issues.
You also have the possibility that the at-large members from other parties will fill in for constituents in ridings where the local politician is only able to interact with like-minded constituents, increasing the access that citizens have with politicians.
39 politicians chosen by other politicians ... not you
This is the most common myth presented by the MMP opponents. Under this logic the entire of the 107 members of the past parliament were "chosen by other politicians ... not you."
There are two types of candidates nominated by the parties relevant to this discussion: party nominated candidates running in individual ridings, and party nominated candidates running for at-large province-wide seats. The current electoral system (Ontario-FPTP) has only party nominated candidates running in individual ridings.
I tried to look up past elections and I am currently unaware of a non-party-nominated seat (AKA: independent Candidate) being elected in Ontario. While I know this has happened federally, this is extremely rare. It is almost guaranteed in an election in Canada (federally and the provinces, except the Northwest Territories and Nunavut which do not have parties) that a party nominated candidate will win in each of the ridings.
The Ontario-MMP system would improve this situation, greatly reducing the power exerted by parties over the current Ontario-FPTP system. When you separate the vote for the person from the vote for the party, you make it far more likely that independent candidates can get elected in the ridings. A good person doesn't have to be nominated by a party any more to become the MPP for a riding, and thus we should expect independent candidates winning far more ridings than they happens under the current system.
It also means that in ridings where a leader or cabinet minister is running, it is possible for both the leader to get elected *AND* a local representative. I live in Ottawa South, the riding held by Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty. If people in this riding vote Liberal on the party side of the ballot, but for someone other than Dalton on the person-side, we can keep both. It might take a bit of time for constituents to understand the new system well enough to do that, but the new system at least makes this possible.
Closed door party deal-making for weeks after elections, to decide who governs the province
This comes from a blind support in Majority governments, false or otherwise. I believe that the only time a majority government should form is if a majority of citizens voted for that government, and never otherwise.
There are countries that have only one party which will form the government no matter who you vote for. This way you know who will form the government long before the election. Would these same people consider this an improvement as well?
Canadians should not take how minority or coalition governments work in Canada now and assume this is how it would work in the future. The "winner take all" electoral systems breeds an inability for elected politicians from different parties to work together. With MMP it will be far easier for parties to work together in areas where they agree.
It would also reduce the number of false-merged parties. Federally we saw the death of the Progressive Conservative party, while under most electoral modernizations we could have seen both the Reform and PC parties survive and be able to work together in coalition governments.
I think it would be far more stable for separate parties to come together to form coalition governments of similar-but-not-identical parties, than to have the current system of governments being formed by unstable coalition parties and the instability caused by floor crossing. In the case of the PC/Reform coalition party, the decision was not only done in closed-door party deal-making, but was done against the wishes of PC party members and promises made to the supporters of leadership candidates that allowed Peter MacKay to become the leader.
It is far more accountable to have people voting for individual members of individual parties who later form a coalition government, then to have the bureaucrats in a falsely-merged party making all the decisions about what percentage of the different coalition party components will be nominated to run in ridings.
Tax dollars paying for 22 more politicians and their staff at Queen's Park
I never supported Mike Harris's "Fewer Politicians Act" as I fundamentally disagree with the rhetoric that we are represented better by having fewer representatives. Having fewer representatives means they become more busy and are less able to understand the details and longer-term impacts of legislation. This makes them far more susceptible to lobbying by special interest groups. I am very willing to pay a tiny bit more in taxes to ensure that government is more robust from this type of corruption.
The Ontario-MMP proposal brings the number of MPs up to 129, one seat fewer than before Mike Harris' radical "Fewer Politicians Act" that was passed by a false-majority government without any referendum or public debate at all.
This number will continue to change over time as ridings are adjusted for changes in population. The important formula is that 70% of seats will be riding seats.
A confusing ballot and vote-counting system
I can't claim to understand this objection. Many of the people I speak to suggest that the new ballot makes understanding the method that we form governments far easier. With the Ontario-MMP system there is a direct correlation between the Ontario-wide polling before an election and the composition of the seats after the election. The province-wide party vote doesn't get screwed by the statistical anomalies that the FPTP system creates, such as a majority of people voting for candidates other than the party that won a majority of seats.
A weaker, indecisive Ontario
There is this place called Cuba....
I don't consider having false majorities a matter of having a strong, decisive Ontario. What this causes is major government waste caused by the policy pendulum. We swing one way with one false majority, and then the next false majority comes in and wastes time un-doing what the previous false majority did as well as making their own unpopular decisions.
I consider a system that creates these pendulum swings to be a weak and indecisive system in the longer term, and this is in fact what the FPTP system has brought us and that the MMP system will help solve.
Fringe parties holding the balance of power with 2 or 3 seats
This is no different than claiming that allowing independent candidates (IE: candidates not nominated by parties at all) should be banned because it becomes possible for these independents to hold the balance of power.
This power is only possible if the parties are otherwise highly divided on the specific issue, and these few votes tip to 50%+1 of the votes in the house. I have to question the validity and long-term survival of legislation that squeaks by this way.
The flip side is to ask this question: if over 3% of the votes cast (itself a very large number) were to a specific party, can we claim to be a democracy if we disallow them to have any seats at all? Are we really that disrespectful of politically active minorities in Ontario?