More post-election blathering

So, low voter turnout has got people talking electoral reform again.

Sadly this discussion seems to always focus on proportional representation. I say sadly because while I like the idea of every vote counting, I hate the idea of the parties deciding who sits in Parliament, not the voters. I haven’t yet seen a proposal for a system that lets us allocate some percentage of seats to the parties based on the popular vote percentages where the party bureaucracy doesn’t decide who fills those seats.

Also, those schemes seem designed to create a number of small blocs in Parliament. I’m not actually opposed to that, but it’s not the first goal I’d want electoral form to go after.

I think I’d rather focus us on electoral reform using the preferential ballot. That would help substantially with the thing that annoys me most about our current system: that 70% of the electorate can vote for parties at least marginally to the left of centre, but somehow we end up with a right wing government. If people could vote a preference slate, then I suspect that A) the NDP would get a larger percentage of the votes in the “first preference” position, since people wouldn’t be worried about strategic voting issues, and B) the Liberals would be the government now–they’re not first pick for many people (as the current results show), but I am guessing they would be second choice for a lot of people.

Something like this would also mean that my old riding wouldn’t be going the wrong way by 43 votes, I hope. I am heartily embarrassed by the results of that race. In a town with two universities–what’s wrong with the students, I ask you? Didn’t they listen to Rick?

I’ve also heard some discussion of compulsory voting laws. I’m honestly going back and forth on that one–it kills me that some people don’t feel compelled to exercise their civic responsibilities, but I also think we shouldn’t need to enforce it. We should be able to convince people to do it. I assume that some of the other reforms being discussed would help with this by making people feel that their votes mattered more, but an aggressive program of marketing voting as effective, cool, and a duty, might not be a bad idea either.