It's Election Season in Canada(?)

Who would you vote for?


  • Total voters
    94
What's that all about? I saw something about it on the skyscrapercity forums but didn't really pay attention

Ville de Quebec wants a new arena to coax the NHL to return to them, and they thought that they could coax federal money to do it guessing that Harper would love such an opportunity to regain all the votes that he lost in Quebec, not realising that his ultimate analysis that it would cost him too many votes in the rest of the country to be worth it, so he won't.

Then, in his infinite wisdom, Ignatieff seemed to think that it was worth it and stated that he would fund it. I have no idea why because the Liberals stand zero chance of getting seats anywhere in Quebec outside of Montreal and Outaouais.
 
Ville de Quebec wants a new arena to coax the NHL to return to them, and they thought that they could coax federal money to do it guessing that Harper would love such an opportunity to regain all the votes that he lost in Quebec, not realising that his ultimate analysis that it would cost him too many votes in the rest of the country to be worth it, so he won't.

Then, in his infinite wisdom, Ignatieff seemed to think that it was worth it and stated that he would fund it. I have no idea why because the Liberals stand zero chance of getting seats anywhere in Quebec outside of Montreal and Outaouais.

Perhaps to bring attention that Harper isn't doing it? I would have thought calling the Bloc secessionists would have done enough damage, but perhaps it's to push Bloc past torries in some ridings. Maybe. Iggy probably just blundered.
 
This is why we need to follow the lead of our cousins in the Southern Hemisphere and move to a better voting system.

I personally favour STV, as used in Aus, over MMP as used in NZ.

Just to check for my own curiosity:

Do you mean preference voting (instant runoff voting) in single member electorates like our House of Reps?

Or do you mean proportional representation in multi-member electorates? STV is only used in the Senate, and in the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmanian legislatures.
 
which party opposes gay marriage again?

As already posted twice it is only the Conservatives that oppose it (I have no idea about the Bloc, we don't care about them in BC and they don't care about us). I strongly encourage you to do as much reading as possible about the different parties before this election since you obviously are behind the times.
 
What's that all about? I saw something about it on the skyscrapercity forums but didn't really pay attention

Quebec city wants to build a new hockey arena in the hopes of bringing back an NHL team. At a projected cost of ~$M400, most of the funding will be coming from public sources (provincial & municipal) with the private sector so far committing at most ~$M60 IF a team moves in.
 
Just to check for my own curiosity:

Do you mean preference voting (instant runoff voting) in single member electorates like our House of Reps?

Or do you mean proportional representation in multi-member electorates? STV is only used in the Senate, and in the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmanian legislatures.

Sorry, should have been more specific. I am referring to the former.
 
As already posted twice it is only the Conservatives that oppose it (I have no idea about the Bloc, we don't care about them in BC and they don't care about us). I strongly encourage you to do as much reading as possible about the different parties before this election since you obviously are behind the times.

i likely would not vote.
 
Sorry, should have been more specific. I am referring to the former.

Ah, ok then. Word of warning though: you'd have to make preferencing compulsory (you must number every box) to make the tactical voting thing disappear completely. The optional preferencing being voted on in the UK, and used in NSW state elections, doesn't really do much in the way of delivering preferences capable of overturning a primary vote lead.
 
Ah, ok then. Word of warning though: you'd have to make preferencing compulsory (you must number every box) to make the tactical voting thing disappear completely. The optional preferencing being voted on in the UK, and used in NSW state elections, doesn't really do much in the way of delivering preferences capable of overturning a primary vote lead.

That would make it impossible for people to voice their opinion of "I don't like/care for any of the other candidates, but this one fellow is decent", though, which would obfuscate the preferences of the voter. It is unnecessary.
 
In theory. But the trade-off is lots of people don't preference just because they don't, not because of any firm reasoned commitment to not preferencing. Which limits the utility of having preferences in the first place.

Of course the bigger problem is single-member electorates just ignore any community which isn't geographically concentrated. But the point remains.
 
In theory. But the trade-off is lots of people don't preference just because they don't, not because of any firm reasoned commitment to not preferencing. Which limits the utility of having preferences in the first place.

Of course the bigger problem is single-member electorates just ignore any community which isn't geographically concentrated. But the point remains.

The opinion is just an example. Making compulsory ranking of all candidates forces voters to decide on candidates where they have no differentiating opinion to rank them or would rather not vote for.


Obfuscation and complexity are good, they make elections less prone to tampering from multiple sources.

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/11/100640-using-complexity-to-protect-elections/fulltext

A summary in your own words, please, tl;dr.
 
The opinion is just an example. Making compulsory ranking of all candidates forces voters to decide on candidates where they have no differentiating opinion to rank them or would rather not vote for.

This is true. But so what?
 
This is true. But so what?

It increases randomness in the voting result. People don't have clear preferences beyond the first few candidates, so they vote (i) randomly (ii) based on arbitrary and visceral intuitions. I would rather not have my legislature elected arbitrarily thank-you-very-much.
 
Canada declares war on Libya; Government Falls?


It's official; we're going to the polls in May. Now if only we could have a decent conversation about electoral reform in the mainstream media.
 
Canada declares war on Libya; Government Falls?


It's official; we're going to the polls in May. Now if only we could have a decent conversation about electoral reform in the mainstream media.

Screw reform. I really am one of few remaining advocates of FPTP. I voted for STV in the BC referendum, but I won't have any of that at the federal level.
 
It increases randomness in the voting result. People don't have clear preferences beyond the first few candidates, so they vote (i) randomly (ii) based on arbitrary and visceral intuitions. I would rather not have my legislature elected arbitrarily thank-you-very-much.

Not really true. There's frequently only a small handful of candidates and even if there aren't, the only things that matter are first preference vote and which of the last two candidates standing get ranked higher.
 
This is true. But so what?

It's unnecessary.. The whole point of electoral reform is to better represent the interests of the electorate, not to specifically undo strategic voting. Which, come to think of it, preferential voting would already do away with quite nicely by definition. Making ranking of all candidates compulsory would be one step back from the two steps forward preferential voting would bring. Which, as I said, would be to remove a person's ability to spoil their ballots after their preferred candidates have been eliminated in the process.

Baird made an odd comment during the session today, basically co-opting the "American Dream" and on the spot creating the "Canadian Dream". :confused:
 
That's fine, but just be aware in practice, that optional preferencing is almost indestinguishable from First Past The Post.
 
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