Ontario Votes | Unpublished
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Erwin Dreessen's picture
Ottawa, Ontario
About the author

Retired economist (Ph.D., Berkeley, 1972) Co-founder (1997) and former chair of the Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital.  Wrote an annotated bibliography on what sustainability means for businesses (2009) -- http://web.ncf.ca/ct976/.

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Ontario Votes

June 13, 2014

The election results once again show how ludicrous and unfair a system of elections we have in this country. The Liberals increased their popular vote by just one percentage points and gained 10 seats; they can now govern unimpeded for four years, with the support of just 38.7 percent of the 51% of eligible voters who bothered to vote.

The PCs lost 4.2 percent of the popular vote and got punished by a loss of 10 seats. The NDP also gained one percentage point but got nothing. The Greens increased their percent of the vote by 66%, garnering almost 5 % of the popular vote but still have no MPP at Queen's Park.

There is a better way. The 2007 referendum on proportional representation was not a fair test, as Fred Cutler and Patrick Fournier have shown.(*)

Erwin Dreessen

(*) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/why-ontarians-said-no-to-mmp...