Quote:
Originally posted by Bend it like Bourgeois@May 17 2005, 09:19 PM
That's exactly my point.
If our current system keeps the liberals in power and they can do whatever they want to keep it, how do you suppose anything will ever change?
The NDP is hardly opposite the Liberals. The liberal budget is in fact the NDP budget right now.
If the NDP should indeed be more powerful than they are as you said above, then I don't see why they aren't a viable option right now.
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Things can change if people demand change. If enough people cared and were vocal about electoral reform, it would happen. If the people demanded that the system be revamped, it would happen. Right now I don't think there is the awareness on the issue. People are frustrated with the regionalism we can see that on our board with the Alberta separation topics and obviously people are frustrated that the BLOC can get so much power in our political system despite being only popular in one province and having an agenda of separation. I just don't think people know what the answer is and therefore they become disillusioned with the whole thing. Well there are solutions and we should be talking about them. A LOT.
The NDP struggles to get any sort of power because of the current electoral system. Our current system favours parties that can gain a huge following one region (like the BLOC). The NDP has a high vote share nationally (15.7% of the country voted for them last election) but they did not get anywhere close to 15% of the seats, they only got 19 seats. Contrast that to the BLOC who got 54 seats with only 12.4% of the national vote. That's not right. That's not fair. I'm not sure why we allow that to happen. Why people aren't upset about it.
Our first past the post system encourages the big parties to stay in power, gives regional parties a disproportionate amount of power and in general it fosters some of our regionalism problem. Based on the percentages of people who voted for them, there should be more Conservative MP's from across the country and less in Alberta and there should be more Liberal MP's in the west and less in Ontario. If that happened Alberta would have more of a voice in a Liberal government, the Conservatives would be seen less as the "Western" party, the BLOC would lose seats and the NDP would gain.