Federal Election 2K
So. After enduring many weeks of rather useless campaigning, during which most of the pressing issues of the electorate where ignored (guess which major party in my riding used the ``consult the people on that issue'' cop-out in response to my questions), the status-quo is more or less maintained, with some additional polarization between Liberal and Canadian Alliance voters (the latter, in my opinion, garnering a lot of their vote merely because they maintained the appearance of the ``most likely to force the Liberals into a minority'' throughout the campaign).
After many hundreds of millions of donated and tax-payed dollars were spent on useless advertising (which did exactly squat to outline any policies) and voting, are we any further ahead on:
What direction health care should take?
How the federal government should handle education?
Whether the so-called ``brain drain'' is getting better or worse, and what to do about it?
How we can fix the archaic electoral system?
No. The entire election was about vague appearances, lending further credence to recent theorizing that political parties are getting better at what they actually do (sell their image) to the detriment of what they are supposed to do: determine good policy. Of course, it's nearly impossible to have any sort of national debate, and even more impossible to do this through the media, which is concentrated into a handful of corporations (with almost all the election coverage coming from Southam, Thompson, the CBC or Global).
The only way to have meaningful debate is at the local level, with candidates speaking directly to their electors.
What is needed right away is a system which encourages people to read and discuss policy platforms and vote with this knowledge in mind. Before the next election, we should:
Limit Party Politics
With no ``brand name'' party to vote for, you would be forced to actually read what each candidate in your riding has to say. Realistically, people will still band into parties for funding and recognition, but eliminating the party affiliations from the ballots and making party-identifiable signs illegal would mostly fix the problem of parties. The latter may be unpopular (and, indeed, is against the principle of free speech), but eliminating the party affiliation on the ballots is definitely needed.
Further, once all the candidates are elected, they should vote amongst themselves to decide who will be leader, who should not also be an MP and who should have no real power. Also, the elected MPs should vote on important cabinate positions (which, ideally, would be filled by qualified people: the finance minister should be well versed in economics, for example). This would reduce the importance of party leaders, which would give much more credence to what your local MP has to say. Local debates would become more important; riding residents might actually attend local debates in large numbers. This would further encourage independent candidates (sad indeed to see not a single independent in the House for this term).
Fix the Voting System
Voting for only one candidate is absurd; rare indeed is the case when a single candidate represents your views exactly. One of the following systems should be adopted for voting:
Approval voting (my favourite), where you can vote for any number of candidates. For example, you might be happy with anyone except one particular candidate in which case you could vote for all the other candidates. Similarity, you may be satisfied with either of two candidates; vote for both!
Ranked voting, where you must rank the candidates in order from most-preferred to least-preferred. In a riding with 10 candidates, a first-place ranking would mean 10 points, whereas a last-place ranking would mean just a single vote.
Multiple voting (perhaps not the right term), where each elector gets a certain number of votes to spread amongst the candidates (for example, five). If you really like one candidate you might give them four votes while giving a single vote to a less-liked candidate.
Semi-proportional representation, combined with any of the above voting methods by having an equal number of ``provincial MPs'' as normal MPs in each province. These ``provincial MPs'' could be elected based on the proportional vote each party received (which could be separate ballot items; you'd vote for both a candidate and a party, which don't have to be the same). After the popular vote is tallied, the provincial MP seats are given to parties with a certain amount of support (say greater than 5%) according to their popular support. [This is not my idea; see discussion on can.politics.] Already-elected MPs would factor into this. For example:
Three parties A, B and C are running in a province with 10 seats (so there are 10 ``real'' seats and 10 ``proportional'' seats). Lets say the vote goes: 40% to A, 30% to B and 30% to C, although it so happens that in each riding the party A MP is elected (quite possible; see Ontario). Thus, all 10 ``real'' MP seats go to party A. In order to balance this, both B and C would need 6 seats each (and A would have to lose 2). Unfortunately, there are only 10 left, so B would get 5 and C would get 5 of the ``provincial'' seats (A would keep all 10 ``real'' seats). This doesn't exactly balance the House, but would be much better. Further, each riding still has a ``local'' MP to whom constituents can bring local problems as well as a number of ``provincial'' MPs (probably from different parties) to whom they can bring problems.