Reservations on Proportional Representation
I have a couple of concerns with regard to proportional
representation.
My most important concern is that an un-elected individual could
sit in the BC Legislature. This would occur when a Party receives
enough votes to be entitled to a seat in the legislature (under
proportional representation) where the representative is selected
by the Party entitled to the proportionality representative seat.
The party in question could well select someone who is abhorrent to
the population at large, but the population at large has no
mechanism to reject the selected individual.
By way of illustration, a small party could receive sufficient
votes to receive a seat under a proportional representation
approach and put forward as its representative for the Legislature
someone who is like Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, etc. On
the other hand they could put forward people like Ghandhi, the
Queen Mother, the Pope, etc. How does one know, before the fact,
which type of person is first on the list to represent a small
party if it receives sufficient votes to have a seat in the
Legislature? I do not want an Idi Amin type individual in our
Legislature. I do not want a system that lets unelected personnel
choose who is going to represent particular points of view. If a
small party is deemed to be entitled to representation then the
public must choose who, from an array of candidates from the
particular Party, will represent the small partys point of view. At
least this way the public controls the system, not the elite of
each party.
Related to this, and depending on the method for voting for
proportional representatives, how can a party representative who,
while acceptable to say 10% of the voters, be allowed to sit as a
representative when it is clear that 90% of the population (the
vast majority) do not want anything to do with the small party in
question?
Rather than having proportional representation, as talked about
in the media, I am inclined to a system where the majority prevails
through successive run-off elections until one candidate receives
50%+1 of the vote in each riding. I think that through this
approach minority parties would have to move from one issue
positions to something embracing more widespread concerns, and
major middle of the road parties would have come forward with
realistic positions on issues that, at least, speak to the concerns
of the minority.
My other major concern with proportional representation as
proposed by small parties is that it is simply intellectual elitism
put forward by a group of people who are not happy that the
majority have not accepted the views of minority. They (the small
parties) believe that if they cannot convince the majority through
education then they (the small parties) need to tilt the electoral
process so that their minority views can get to play on a stage
(the Legislature in Victoria) significantly in excess of their
publicly perceived (and received) minority status.
It is my observation that anytime any individual or organization
uses the word educate as a verb it means that they (the users of
educate as a verb) are not able to accept the fact that people have
said no to their ideas. The premise is that if you say yes to their
ideas you are educated, if you say no you are uneducated. You are
not (in their view) allowed to say no simply because you have
reviewed their arguments and found their evidence for particular
positions wanting (and in fact probably ill-founded on the basis of
the evidence presented by the people who wish to educate you).
Watch out for intellectual elitism and education. It is the uniform
of those who cannot accept that their views did not prevail.
So, please be wary of proportional representation positions.
Proportional representation is proposed by people who need the
system changed because they are not happy with the results. Would
they be any happier with the same results if it came from
proportional representation?
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