After Ontario's election, I'm seeing lots of pleas for proportional representation in the op-ed pages and letters to the editor. For the most part, this seems to be coming from the fact that the Liberals got less than 40% of the vote, yet have a majority.
I have mixed emotions about it. On the one hand, I'd like to see proportional representation. There are a number of negatives to it, but I think it is plenty better than our current first-past-the-post system. I would caution proportional representation's boosters that it won't fix as many things as they think it will.
Why I'm not so positive towards these calls is the simple fact that we already had a referendum on the topic, and it was soundly defeated. I found that vote profoundly disappointing. That disappointment was not so much the result (like I say, in not that enthusiastic about the system) as the sheer lack of debate. The system isn't rocket science, but alarmingly few people understood it. And alarmingly few people were willing to consider change. The whole experience was just one long exercise in rubbing my nose in two of the biggest problems in politics: poorly informed voters have dumbed issues down to the point of uselessness, and everyone has the attitude that the current conditions are unbearable, but we must not change anything.
So I really think that all this campaigning for proportional representation is wasted breath. In the UK, the Liberal Democrats dropped their long-standing demand for proportional representation after a similarly sound referendum defeat. I think it's time to remember that politics is the art of the possible, and changing voting systems just isn't possible right now.
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