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Originally Posted by SebC
Well, since our system doesn't give anyone the legitimacy of a population majority, perhaps the solution is that Harper can speak for his 40%, Mulcair can speak for his 31%, and Rae gets to speak for his 19%. If we want someone to speak for all of us, then we need a system that makes sure that somone gets at least 50%.
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Government doesn't work that way. Your never going to get a system where it works that way. Even if you had a one person one vote scenario, I don't think that there has been a government based on a majority of voters in a pure population vote with the exception of the Soviet elections in the 70's and the current North Korean elections.
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Yes, but with the caveat that a non-majority plurality that includes the median voter has a far greater legitimacy in representing the country as a whole than a non-majority plurality that excludes the median voter.
The median voter is important because a coalition under a proportional system must include him to reach a majority. Thus Chretien might not have been PM, but the Liberals would have been a necessary part of any logical coalition government. We cannot say the same of Harper and the Conservatives.
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i would completely disagree with that, first off its a pretty elitist statement. Second of all you could almost argue that the Conservatives represent the median of voters since they out of all the parties have the most seats spread out through the entire geography of the country, the Liberals don't and the NDP don't. When Chretien won his majority you could then say in your logic that he didn't have the right to speak for this country because he had next to no seats in a lot of geographic areas in this country so he didn't represent for example Western Canada.
Plus the NDP don't really represent the median as their policies really represent far left ideology, the Liberals had also moved significantly left while like it or not, the conservatives were the most centrist party in the election, so you could argue that this Conservative government does speak for Canada based on geographic and voter medians. However since it doesn't work that way, its irrelevant and until the system changes its irrelevant, the Conservatives have a majority government and therefore their policies are the policies of this country until such time as they aren't.
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