52-48

Fib

Poem

Good fit

For today

Don Trump's acquittal

Gives lie to the lie that lies count

Fancy Furniture Famine

Here's the furniture the facilities people moved in to replace the fancy MLA furniture. It was still a pretty nice office. Not shown: sofa. 

Fancy Furniture Feast

For a couple of days in 2008, I had fancy MLA furniture in my office at the Legislature Annex. Then they came and took it away. Which is fair, after all, because the furniture is meant for MLAs and there's only so much of it to go around. Dig the fancy TV I had to monitor Question Period. 

EW for PR

Here's an artifact from my last successful election campaign. In Grade 10 (or did the elections happen in Grade 11?) I ran for Public Relations Officer of Leduc Composite High School's Student Council. My chief duty was to read the morning announcements during my Grade 11 year. I thought it was fun.

I ran for President the following year, but lost by about 15 votes, if memory serves. What the people giveth, the people taketh away. 

Indefensible

Yesterday, Albertans learned that Dunvegan-Central Peace MLA and former cabinet minister Hector Goudreau wrote a threatening letter to Betty Turpin, superintendent of the Holy Family Catholic Regional School Division. Folks who watch the news might remember that school division was advocating pretty hard for a new school in Grimshaw, since their current school is pretty much falling apart. They weren't getting any traction from government, so they shot a video showing the poor condition of the school and sent it to the media, which annoyed the government.

Goudreau (who as an MLA should be sticking up for his constituents, including Turpin and the students she serves) reacted incredibly poorly, writing "In order for your community to have the opportunity to receive a new school, you and your school board will have to be very diplomatic from here on out." He also writes "I advise you to be cautious as to how you approach future communications as your comments could be upsetting to some individuals. This could delay the decision on a new school."

Since starting work for the Official Opposition a little over six years ago, Alberta Liberal MLAs have told me many stories about the level of fear felt by school trustees, municipal elected officials and other public servants. People don't want to speak out against the PC government because doing so puts their jobs, and their funding for community projects, at risk.

While I believed what my bosses were telling me, I don't think it ever felt truly real until I saw Goudreau's letter, in stark black and white. This attitude of entitlement is absolutely unacceptable, and I am deeply offended that any government member would so blatantly threaten a citizen. Even if I were a Progressive Conservative partisan, this would deeply embarrass me - not because a PC MLA was caught doing something bad, but because my government had grown so entitled and sure of itself that its representatives see no problem with bullying citizens.

In today's Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald, Graham Thomson and Don Braid capture the importance of the story better than I ever could. I hope you read both columns and keep them in mind when you cast your vote later this spring.

The Preferential Ballot

Like a lot of self-described progressives, I'm still annoyed that the Harper Conservatives managed to eke out a majority government earlier this month, despite winning significantly less than fifty percent of the vote. Moderate and left-leaning Canadians in swing ridings are forced to vote strategically, trying to predict which candidate - the Liberal or the New Democrat - has a better chance of defeating the Conservative. As we saw in Edmonton-Centre and a number of other ridings across Canada, the resulting vote split allowed Tories to win by "running up the middle" and capturing a plurality, but not a majority, of votes...and a plurality is all you need to win in our first-past-the-post system. Folks on the right had the same problem when the Progressive Conservative/Reform split allowed Jean Chretien's Liberals to win a succession of majority governments.

A lot of folks on the centre-left have suggested that proportional representation might better represent the true intentions of voters, but the most common criticism of this route is its unlikelihood of producing majority governments.

Another option occurred to me on the drive home from work yesterday: what if we kept the first-past-the-post system, but used preferential ballots to rank the candidates? Also called "instant runoff voting," this gives voters in a multi-party system the freedom to choose candidates without the fear of handing the race to their least favourite candidate.

For example, a ballot in Quebec might be filled in thusly:

Ralph Hardliner (Conservative): 3
Joe Moderate (Liberal): 1
Annie Socialist (NDP): 2
Anna Verte (Green): 5
Marie Vivrelibre (Bloq): 4

If none of the candidates manage to get a majority of first-place votes, then a second round of counting begins, with the candidate with the least number of first-place ballots eliminated. His or her ballots are reallocated to the remaining candidates, with the second choice on those ballots being awarded to whichever candidate earned them. This process continues until one candidate has a majority of first and second place ballots. He or she wins the seat.

Assuming that voters in Edmonton-Centre listed the Liberal and New Democrat candidates as their first or second choices, in whatever order, then one of them likely would have won. Of course that assumes that all Liberal voters choose the New Democrats as their second choice, and all New Democrats reciprocate...a dangerous assumption! But at the very least, it seems as though this system would stand a slightly better chance of producing less polarized results, with fewer disappointed voters.

Cast your vote in order of preference:

Earl, you're on the right track
Earl, this is a dumb idea because you haven't considered all the ramifications
Earl, I wish you'd blog less about politics and more about popular culture
Earl, I wish you'd blog less about popular culture and more about politics
Earl, I wish you'd learn HTML so you could have put a voting widget here