[oldeguy]

Is anyone following this? Can anyone explain it to an olde guy who really doesn't follow politics?

[NOS2Go4Me]

Current system: you elect who you want based on the candidates for your riding. First to get the most votes per riding wins. Balanced, fair, creates either a majority (dictatorship-by-proxy?) or a minority (either far better or far worse, depending) government at the provincial and federal levels.

Proposed system: A vote for the riding's candidiate of choice and a vote for the party. The party with the most votes gets to parachute in NON-ELECTED, by-appointment-only (OMGPATRONAGE) additional bureaucrats with an as-yet-undetermined level of accountability to the public. Creates a mixed-representation government.

Personally, for all its flaws, I'm voting to leave things as they are. It's bad enough each majority party has done the "parachute candidate" thing before, but it's another to do it AFTER the election with ZERO consultation with the voting public.

They're basically asking you to vote for, and approve of, blatant patronage.

Anyone voting for this has SQUAT to say about patronage at all after that point.

[NefCanuck]

Basically this "mixed system" offers the worst of all possible worlds IMO.

The mixed system still has us voting for a candidate in a riding who we may despise but we want to vote for the party (or vice versa) and the rest will be made up of unelected people from the party's "list" that the public has no say in how they get on that list at all.

Status quo from me as well...

NefCanuck

[oldeguy]

I did a little research on the whole matter. Checked into governments that work the way the proposal wants ours to work. Some of them have a pretty unstable history, with governments changing quite often.