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I read it backward x_x lols.
There's something fucked up about the media openly endorsing politicians imo.
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On October 19 2015 01:18 radscorpion9 wrote: Well the election is tomorrow. I just want to make my case here. In Canada we don't really have a real democracy under first past the post. Last time 60% of the people didn't vote for Harper and instead of getting some level of control that's reflective of their decisions, Harper was given a majority to do whatever he wants. Basically, 60% of Canadians (the majority) are being ignored in Canada directly because of first past the post. If that isn't a failure in the democratic system I don't know what is. So fundamentally this needs to change.
Well how to change it? Vote in the candidate that has been emphatic about getting rid of that system, and who has the best chance of winning. That just happens to be Trudeau and the liberal party.
I understand people have a lot of different views, many are libertarian and so on. Myself I tend to vote for the green party. But you really have to work on the fundamentals before anything else, and the fundamentals tragically don't yet exist in Canada. So lets at least get a basic democracy in place, then we can go on to voting for whoever we want.
edit: Well I guess the obvious exceptions are if your riding is highly likely to vote NDP just get NDP instead. But in ridings where its close I think liberal is better.
~Happy voting day~ -Radscorpion
I totally agree, but Mulcair also opposes first past the post and has even concretely announced the system they will use, whereas the Liberals have been more wishy-washy about it, and are actually less likely to implement it because they have good chances of getting majorities as well at approx. 40% of the popular vote.
If they get a minority this time around, they'll probably change it because the NDP will force them to.But if they get a majority I don't know if they will follow through. We'll see.
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On October 19 2015 03:45 BallinWitStalin wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2015 01:18 radscorpion9 wrote: Well the election is tomorrow. I just want to make my case here. In Canada we don't really have a real democracy under first past the post. Last time 60% of the people didn't vote for Harper and instead of getting some level of control that's reflective of their decisions, Harper was given a majority to do whatever he wants. Basically, 60% of Canadians (the majority) are being ignored in Canada directly because of first past the post. If that isn't a failure in the democratic system I don't know what is. So fundamentally this needs to change.
Well how to change it? Vote in the candidate that has been emphatic about getting rid of that system, and who has the best chance of winning. That just happens to be Trudeau and the liberal party.
I understand people have a lot of different views, many are libertarian and so on. Myself I tend to vote for the green party. But you really have to work on the fundamentals before anything else, and the fundamentals tragically don't yet exist in Canada. So lets at least get a basic democracy in place, then we can go on to voting for whoever we want.
edit: Well I guess the obvious exceptions are if your riding is highly likely to vote NDP just get NDP instead. But in ridings where its close I think liberal is better.
~Happy voting day~ -Radscorpion I totally agree, but Mulcair also opposes first past the post and has even concretely announced the system they will use, whereas the Liberals have been more wishy-washy about it, and are actually less likely to implement it because they have good chances of getting majorities as well at approx. 40% of the popular vote. If they get a minority this time around, they'll probably change it because the NDP will force them to.But if they get a majority I don't know if they will follow through. We'll see.
At the end of the day it's just going to be whatever benefits them most. NDP wanting the change is only because they know they stand no chance to win a majority regardless.
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On October 19 2015 02:13 Djzapz wrote:I read it backward x_x lols. There's something fucked up about the media openly endorsing politicians imo. It is kind of odd for a news outlet to openly declare a bias, but then again, it's nice that a news outlet is openly declaring their bias, so we can look at the rest of their content in that context.
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On October 19 2015 03:57 killa_robot wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2015 03:45 BallinWitStalin wrote:On October 19 2015 01:18 radscorpion9 wrote: Well the election is tomorrow. I just want to make my case here. In Canada we don't really have a real democracy under first past the post. Last time 60% of the people didn't vote for Harper and instead of getting some level of control that's reflective of their decisions, Harper was given a majority to do whatever he wants. Basically, 60% of Canadians (the majority) are being ignored in Canada directly because of first past the post. If that isn't a failure in the democratic system I don't know what is. So fundamentally this needs to change.
Well how to change it? Vote in the candidate that has been emphatic about getting rid of that system, and who has the best chance of winning. That just happens to be Trudeau and the liberal party.
I understand people have a lot of different views, many are libertarian and so on. Myself I tend to vote for the green party. But you really have to work on the fundamentals before anything else, and the fundamentals tragically don't yet exist in Canada. So lets at least get a basic democracy in place, then we can go on to voting for whoever we want.
edit: Well I guess the obvious exceptions are if your riding is highly likely to vote NDP just get NDP instead. But in ridings where its close I think liberal is better.
~Happy voting day~ -Radscorpion I totally agree, but Mulcair also opposes first past the post and has even concretely announced the system they will use, whereas the Liberals have been more wishy-washy about it, and are actually less likely to implement it because they have good chances of getting majorities as well at approx. 40% of the popular vote. If they get a minority this time around, they'll probably change it because the NDP will force them to.But if they get a majority I don't know if they will follow through. We'll see. At the end of the day it's just going to be whatever benefits them most. NDP wanting the change is only because they know they stand no chance to win a majority regardless.
Yep, that's why if you really want to see proportional representation I think that empowering a liberal-ndp block would be the best bet.
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Canada11219 Posts
While I have largely been a traditionalist with FPTP, I think the only reason why I am okay with it is we have multiple parties to vote for and regionalism is strong enough that new parties can sweep in. If the NDP and Liberals ever unite the left in one party, I would flee FPTP- I have zero interest in the polarizing effect of a two party system. Of course, then it would be too late to change.
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I happen to like first past the post and the local representatives. I'm more against candidates running in ridings they don't live in.
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I honestly see no real downside to switching to an alternative to first-past-the-post systems. They are archaic, and definitely make it so that subsets of voters, in effect, don't matter.
Proportional representation is one possible fix, and probably the easiest to get implemented because it is clear and easy to understand. Of note, there are hybrid systems in which you can have locally elected candidates, followed by the assignment of party members to parliament from "lists" to ensure a final seat allocation that is proportional to the total vote they've obtained. One problem with this is that it often means that party leaders don't need to be elected in a local riding, but I don't think that's too big a deal given that even in our system people just parachute party leaders into safe ridings to get them elected anyways.
However, the hands down gold star alternative system is single-transferable-vote (STV). If you're interested in this subject matter, honestly go look it up. It perfectly balances local representation with proportional representation, and (in my opinion) is the best possible system designed to elect representative officials. Check out the wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote It's one side is that it's complex, so harder to explain to folks who don't follow or care about politics much. Which is definitely a downside, but the upsides make it worth it.
Honestly, first-past-the-post blows as a voting system, and I would love to see it changed. The only argument for it is that it somehow "encourages stability" by forcing majority, four-term mandate governments on the citizens more easily. It's downsides are huge, though, which range from encouraging regional parties (like the bloc, who would wither under a proportional representation system) to discouraging small parties with more broadly distributed support (like the NDP historically and the greens presently, who really deserve to have more seats in government based on the proportion of the population that votes for them). Those people deserve democratic representation, too. And the stability argument is pretty weak: having a more representative, coalition based government can be more flexible when dealing with changing circumstances, and is much more accountable to the will of the general population precisely because it's easier to topple. And Europe has had proportional representation systems for a long time; their governments function perfectly well, despite often being coalitions based on compromise.
And yeah, if you ever get a two-party system in power in a FPTP system, you can kiss any chance of alternatives goodbye. Then you just get majority mandates forever. The only reason our political system hasn't devolved into an American-style clusterfuck (but even worse, because there they at least have multiple chambers) is because of the presence of the NDP as an alternative third party.
Anyhow, hopefully this post encourages some people to look into single-transferable voting systems, they are pretty great.
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As a non voter immigrant living in Canada I always thought it would be a good step to at least vote twice for the representatives. It wouldn't be a complete proportional representation but it would allow you to at least vote for who you really care on the first vote. Then you vote for the remaining top two.
I mean here in Quebec it really feels like a dice roll with 4 people. Right now many voters I know vote strategically first rather than for what they really want. Allowing them two votes wouldn't change the system much and it's very simple for folks to understand.
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Been talking with a lot of the more progressive people I know, and a lot of them are on edge right now. Scared of the doom army of elderly Conservative voters. Most are cautiously optimistic of a Liberal minority but don't want to keep their hopes up after what happened in the UK.
Hopefully Ontario votes as the polls say they are, but again I'm not getting my hopes up. The riding I'm in is a dead tie between NDP and Conservative right now so I've been pushing hard to get my Liberal supporting friends to vote NDP.
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Canada11219 Posts
The thing is, I'm not really a big fan of the super riding idea in STV. I'd rather keep the riding sizes the same and use Instant Runoff Voting or some variant.
If we ever switched entirely to electronic voting (which I don't think we should be creating such a big target for hacking), then I think Single Divisible Vote is an interesting option. But I can't imagine counting and recounting the vote by hand so it's not a very good option right now.
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Yeah single divisible isn't bad either, kinda of a similar variant. I likes STV, but I see the merits of that. I don't mind the super areas that STV would tend to make, but I can see that as a legit opposition to it.
I also think recounting isn't that big of a deal. It would make elections more expensive due to manpower issues, but that's not insurmountable by any means and would, in my opinion, be worth the costs.
Also the day they implement electronic voting is the day I stop voting. I want a paper trail/hard copy, electronic systems are too prone to failure/intentional manipulation and voting is something that is far too important.
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On October 19 2015 08:26 Ben... wrote: Been talking with a lot of the more progressive people I know, and a lot of them are on edge right now. Scared of the doom army of elderly Conservative voters. Most are cautiously optimistic of a Liberal minority but don't want to keep their hopes up after what happened in the UK. Hopefully Ontario votes as the polls say they are, but again I'm not getting my hopes up. The riding I'm in is a dead tie between NDP and Conservative right now so I've been pushing hard to get my Liberal supporting friends to vote NDP.
if there is any last day changes in Ontario it will be in favour of the Liberals...
the last few days of campaigning in Ontario the Liberals pulled out their secret weapon : Hurricane Hazel. It was really cool how the Liberals kept letting the PCs attack Trudeau and they never fired back until October 14th. It reminded me of that Rocky movie where he didn't start to fight southpaw until the last minute of the last round
The Liberals did a nice job of getting Wynne to stop discussing Trudeau or Federal politics. The reason the Federal Liberals were so unpopular in Ontario at the start of the campaign was Wynne's initial enthusiastic endorsement of Trudaeau and the federal party. This is why the PCs attempted to join Wynne and Trudeau at the hip in their final attack ad.
The PCs attack on Trudeau was too watered down over 6 months.. it just got old... it became like the drone of background elevator music. The Liberal strategy of waiting until 4 days before the election to break out Hazel Mccallion was pure genius.
On October 19 2015 08:26 Ben... wrote: Scared of the doom army of elderly Conservative voters. Hazel spoke to them in their language. According to the election studies most voters don't really make up their mind until 3 days before the election and Hazel was right there to fire back at the PC attacks on Trudeau. Also, to get a well known grassroots right winger like Mccallion on the Liberals side... just wow.
Overall, i'm really impressed how well the Liberals ran their campaign in Ontario.
look for the Liberals to take Ontario big time.
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On October 19 2015 08:53 Falling wrote: The thing is, I'm not really a big fan of the super riding idea in STV. I'd rather keep the riding sizes the same and use Instant Runoff Voting or some variant.
If we ever switched entirely to electronic voting (which I don't think we should be creating such a big target for hacking), then I think Single Divisible Vote is an interesting option. But I can't imagine counting and recounting the vote by hand so it's not a very good option right now.
Funnily enough in bankrupt New-Brunswick we are on the cutting edge of Canadian voting according to Elections NB and you know what that is? A scanner that counts votes like a multiple choice question. You have your paper trail and an automatic count.
It`s an ok system since you get a quick result but then it would be nice to have people recount everything the same night.
I'm NDP but I'm voting Liberal because the candidate is awesome in my riding and I really like her.
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Simple question to fellow voters. Did online registration work for you? I have tried doing it twice and been unable and thus will need to do it at the polls
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On October 19 2015 10:34 Orcasgt24 wrote: Simple question to fellow voters. Did online registration work for you? I have tried doing it twice and been unable and thus will need to do it at the polls I registered in 2011 but the online registration did work just fine for a friend of mine.
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All the Facebook posts about people not voting needing to vote is making me kinda feel bad for not signing up for overseas voting >_>
Regardless, hope the election turns out well tomorrow. Here's to an even better Canada in the making.
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Damn. Looking at the past pollings for my area. Its highly conservation. It was 77% back in 2011. I'm voting liberal but im skeptical of my liberal candidate even winning....
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Many important pieces of legislation have been passed in Canadian history during Liberal minorities. I just hope the turnout is high.
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