In case you didn't know, we are having an electoral referendum. We need to choose which electoral system we want to have. We have the chance to make this whole political system just a tad closer to a true democracy. How?
Current system:
First Past the Post
Ontario is divided into 107 electoral districts. In each district each voter gets one vote to choose which candidate they feel should win a seat in the provincial legislature. One vote. One ballot.
In an election using the First-Past-the-Post system, the candidate with the most votes wins and will be the representative for the electoral district in the provincial legislature.
After the election, the political party that wins the most electoral districts is normally asked to form a government.
To put this into perspective, this means that if I vote green in my district and the Liberals win the district, my vote counts for nothing after the election.
Mixed Member Proportional
If this system is accepted, Ontarians will have two votes in future elections: one for a ‘Local Member’ and one for a political party.
The provincial legislature would have 129 seats: Local Members’ would fill 90 seats while ‘List Members’ would fill 39 seats.
The political party with the largest number of seats in the legislature, including ‘Local Members’ and ‘List Members’, is asked to form a government.
In each electoral district, one vote would be used to elect a 'Local Member' using a First-Past-the-Post system. The candidate with the most votes in an electoral district wins.
The other vote would be for a political party. Votes for parties will be used to determine the number of 'List Members' each party gets. This is the proportional representation part.
If a political party is entitled to more seats than it won locally, 'List Members' are elected to make up the difference. 'List Members' can only be elected from a political party that received more than 3% of these votes.
In the end, a political party's overall share of seats will roughly equal its share of the total votes for parties in the province.
In this model, if I vote green for my local representative and green for my political party I get a better reflection of what I want. Lets say green doesn't win in my area (surprise!), my second vote is also for green which means that it is added to the total percentage of green votes in Ontario and that percentage will indicate how many green 'list members' get seats. So I still get a say.
Source for this info and much more can be found HERE
In another news I didn't do any cleaning last night because I was way too busy having fun. So suck it house! Don't worry. I have a plan which includes ordering a pizza for dinner and going to vote (no kidding).
The show last night was pretty good. The place was super full. The two bands Brent's in played first (Riot Service and The Second Glance) and they were well received. I forget the name of the band after them but I was not a fan. Even with earplugs in the bass was all washy and uncoordinated and just TOO MUCH.
I got a ride home half way through the headliner (the Ataris) who I don't know beyond their cover of The Boys of Summer. I was SLEEPY and I had the worst headache of my life. I promptly went to sleep.
Brent came home a few hours later and was super cute.
I had forgotten my wedding ring at home because I took it off to cook and left it on the sill in front of the sink and I woke up to him putting it back on my hand and being all sweet. Very nice.
On this day:
in 2005 - He's a sore loser. I wasn't even gloating.