The first past the post system needs to be tweaked at
best: Let’s not throw the baby out with the
bathwater
I’m against proportional representation as it would
cause an endless string of unstable minority governments a la Italy
where the majority parties and entire province are beholden to a
minority and minority parties that manipulate this system to get
their policies implemented. The only way to control such undue lack
of accountability in a proportional representative system would be
to have mandatory criminal charges if the province were to go into
deficit financing; something obviously politicians would be very
disinclined to do. BC politics are already unstable enough; we
don’t need ! to constitutionalize instability.
This thing called a Citizens' Assembly should be to make
government effective, not ungainly and ineffective. It would be
desirable to have a system in which minority voices felt heard, but
they should not be able to unduly influence decisions; otherwise we
simply replace a duly elected 4 year dictatorship for dictatorship
by a few, i.e., an oligarchy or heaven forbid an aristocracy of the
uneducated. Is it just to replace a tyranny of the majority with a
tyranny of the few, I ask rhetorically? Our system is designed to
have parties which incorporate all voices into a big tent,
marginalizing discord. Don’t get me wrong however; if
proportional representation were adopted I would throw my support
to a small party that most closely resembled my individual
hobbyhorse. I think the proponents of proportional representation
are closet anarchists, who would love to see chaos, since it would
make such great grist for the chattering classes i.e. it would sell
papers.
I also disagree with a system in which the party may be able to
have a slate of candidates and have them
‘elected’ based on their particular
party’s popular vote. In this scenario, it would be too
likely for a senior party hack chosen, beholden to no one but his
particular political party.
Because one is white and male does not necessarily
mean that they cannot provide leadership, for leadership
necessarily entails the ability to listen to all voices and make an
informed decision. If anything we should be enabling our
representatives to make these informed decisions, not dousing them
in a cacophony of noise so loud they are unable to think logically
due to the din.
I’ve heard individual voters advocate a
‘none of the above’ [NOTA]option on ballots
which is no choice at all, for if this is truly their choice, they
should have put their name on the ballot as that is likely the only
candidate which would meet their subjective, ill-informed, holier
than thou standards; at heart I believe this to be a cynical and
mischievous recommendation. Although I expect by and large the
outcome would be the same, I believe a preferential ballot
[AV] is definitely a good idea which would get past the
impression that only a minority vote in the government. Thus it
would a needless expense (since the final result is likely to be
the same as the first past the post ballot), but democracy is
expensive.
"Today a like kind of wisdom might caution against
constitutionalizing every grievance that might (or might not)
appear tomorrow" (Potter Stewart).
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