Hodgepodge
Oct. 16th, 2008 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccoj- Final tallies for the election:
Party Elected Vote Share CON 143 37.63% LIB 76 26.24% BQ 50 9.97% NDP 37 18.20% IND 2 0.65% GRN 0 6.80% OTH 0 0.51%
My own riding:
DISTRICT: Ottawa West-Nepean
Candidate, Party, Vote Share
John Baird, CON, 44.98%
David Pratt, LIB, 36.12%
Marlene Rivier, NDP, 11.52%
Frances Coates, GRN, 6.36%
David Page, IND, 0.74%
Alex McDonald, COM, 0.27% - Got an e-mail from my dad, re. our voting system. Made me sigh and roll my eyes because I've seen this kind of thing after every single election since I can remember voting. We all know the way the system is set up sucks. And every so often somebody gets organized enough to do a referendum-type thingy that is mostly voted on by people who probably don't even understand the question, and they decide to keep the system as is. Because change is bad, I guess. Or thinking is bad. Or thinking about change is bad. Or something.
Electoral dysfunction, yet again
Greens deserved more than 20 seats - voting system also punished New Democrats, western Liberals and urban Conservatives
Once again, Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament and contributed to a record low voter turnout.
[Note: The following commentary is based on returns at 2am ET.]
The chief victims of the October 14 federal election were:- Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
- Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
- Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
- New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.
- Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
"How can anyone consider this democratic representation?" asked Barbara Odenwald, President of Fair Vote Canada.
Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation would have been approximately as follows:
Conservatives - 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals - 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP - 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc - 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens - 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)
Fair Vote Canada also has data for each province on the number of seats won and number of seats actually deserved by each party.
Odenwald emphasized that any projection on the use of other voting systems must be qualified, as specific system features would affect the exact seat allocations.
"With a different voting system, people would also have voted differently," said Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada. "There would have been no need for strategic voting. We would likely have seen higher voter turnout. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We would have had more real choices."
Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a national multi-partisan citizens' campaign to promote voting system reform. FVC was founded in 2001 and has a National Advisory Board of distinguished Canadians from all points on the political spectrum.
Not that we need much more exercise. I think three times a week of TaeKwon-Do and biking everywhere (yesterday, for example, we biked 19.5K) is probably doing our bit. Dammit, we deserve hot cocoa after that!
Super Simple, Healthy Hot Cocoa
The secret to this easy recipe? Heat it slowly. Slow heat helps release the antioxidants.
Ingredients
1 1/2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder with 70% or more cacao (such as Scharffen Berger natural cocoa powder or Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa)
2 teaspoons sugar
Pinch of salt
1 cup skim or low-fat milk
Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and heat gently (do not let it boil), stirring frequently, until cocoa is just beginning to steam. Pour into a mug and enjoy.
call the tattoo place- 2 more firms
- e-mail Marcie re. basement
finish goals with kids- review music
- 10 pages
- post re. part ii
- post re. finished fic, art stuff (none of it mine)
- make calendar
- go through dividers on my own fic and try not to swear too much at ff.n
- reply to ff.n, sky, HBLN e-mails
- make vet appointment
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 04:01 am (UTC)And every time I see your kids, I'm awed by them. They really are great kids. (And I don't say that lightly.)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 12:46 am (UTC)Wow - and actually, I was kinda ticked at them, because they weren't behaving terribly well. So for a committed childfree person to say they're great kids is making me feel all gooey :D :D :D
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 05:22 am (UTC)It's funny, I tend to assume that Ottawa is lefty. So to see that your riding went Con (and since we all apparently voted in the incumbents, I'll add "again") surprises me. I'm in Ottawa-Centre which (thanks to Ed Broadbent) has been strongly NDP the last 3 elections.
That Fair Vote breakdown makes me sad. It could be so much better! But if a federal proportional representation referendum goes the way the one in Ontario did it'll be a giant, convoluted, clusterfuck.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 12:50 am (UTC)Yeah, me too! Must stop doing that :(
So to see that your riding went Con (and since we all apparently voted in the incumbents, I'll add "again") surprises me. I'm in Ottawa-Centre which (thanks to Ed Broadbent) has been strongly NDP the last 3 elections.
::envies you::
He spoke at Ottawa Law school a few years ago and I came as close to going all fangirly as I think I'll ever go. He had just come back to politics, after a long stint NGOing, and he talked for a while, then asked for questions from the floor. I have absolutely no memory of what I asked him; I just remember feeling curious about something, then standing up and asking my question - and then suddenly realizing OMG it's Ed Broadbent up there, listening to me talk! Eee! And then he started to answer. And I totally lost the plot of wtf he was saying due to a rather embarrassing attack of OMG it's ED BROADBENT talking about what I ASKED HIM TO TALK ABOUT!!! EEEE!!
::ahem::
That Fair Vote breakdown makes me sad. It could be so much better! But if a federal proportional representation referendum goes the way the one in Ontario did it'll be a giant, convoluted, clusterfuck.
::sigh:: That was so bloody depressing.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 01:52 am (UTC)For like, half a minute. And was still all "Jack Layton was at MY PUB!"
It was sad. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 03:34 am (UTC)And iirc, I was all "OMG Jack Layton was AT YOUR PUB!!!11!!"
no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 12:03 pm (UTC)::ducks and runs::
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 12:51 am (UTC)::misses::
no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 12:51 am (UTC)