Thursday 6 September 2007

Your Big Decision

Ontario is having a referendum along with the provincial election on October 10th. I strongly believe in voting and am always disappointed in voter turn out for the various elections. In terms of the election itself, I have yet to really follow the politics. (Though I believe one party is wanting to implement teaching Creationism beside Evolution in high schools, which scares me, so I'm really going to have to look into it.) I have started to think about the referendum though. When I first heard a little bit about the ideas to changed the election process, I was not impressed. I like it the way it is and am hesitant to add the further complexities the proposed system has. The Mixed Member Proportional system and the voting for it seems more confusing. I feel politics should be simple. The question for the referendum was released in February and after reading it I was actually really impressed with it's simplicity!
Which electoral system should Ontario use to elect members to the provincial legislature?
-The existing electoral system (First-Past-the-Post)
-The alternative electoral system proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly (Mixed Member Proportional)
I still haven't decided with electoral system I would prefer for Ontario, as there are pros and cons for both. It is costing the Ontario Government over $6 Million to run this referendum, so it is important that we all take learning about it and voting seriously. The official website is a good place to research. There is also always Wikipedia and Google searches for further research.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

MMP is better. My Canadian Studies class briefly discussed this process, and it is a much better system than the one we have now. Our government would be less concentrated!

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I forget to sign off..

Kristin