Voting systems: mmm, crunchy.

The Honorable Member for Steve Smith congratulates me for my proposal without, apparently, appreciating the context in which I gave it. I intended it as a weak reference to Jonathan Swift's original Modest Proposal, which was of course something far more radical than mine. My point was to emphasize the arbitrary nature of representation schemes that are fundamentally dependent on defined constituencies. Each one carries an inherent political bias that overemphasizes the representation of some form of interest and underemphasizes the remainder. In the case of most schemes extant or proposed, this bias is geographical/propertarian (to use the term from Le Guin's novel The Disposessed). Proportional representation, on the other hand, lets the voter itself choose the criterion under which it is represented in that the voter directly selects political positions. I would hardly claim that it is perfect, but it solves what is to me a serious problem with constituency-based proposals.

The Member has a point in that he has never said that he supports FPTP. Fine. Then he clearly supports some other model where representation is based on some arbitrary factor other than voter policy preferences. These systems may alleviate some of the worst problems with FPTP, but I'm not convinced they work as well as PR. There is an article in today's Ottawa Citizen about problems with Alberta's old STV system, but it's a pay article (argh), and its purpose is to support traditional FPTP.