AlolanVulpix @ AlolanVulpix @lemmy.ca

[Simple things you can do to grow the proportional representation movement]

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4 yr. ago

I can access all the links, which doesn't work for you?

You can have both ranked voting and proportional representation under Single Transferable Vote (STV)!

The majority of Ontarians wanted another party. In the long run, the only viable solution is proportional representation: !fairvote@lemmy.ca

List of American owned media pretending to be Canadian, infiltrating Canadian culture and politics.

There will be those exploiting this tragedy for their own personal gain.

Be wary of American owned media pretending to be Canadian, infiltrating Canadian culture and politics.

Also, lots of American owned media pretending to be Canadian, infiltrating Canadian culture and politics.

I'm not sure if political parties are the cause. I think it's a combination of winner-take-all electoral systems (e.g., FPTP, IRV), along with weak protections.

Democracy Watch is taking on a lot of these.

Playing devil's advocate: bots can be useful!

Think about the case where a bot fetches data (e.g . Weather, sports, stocks, etc) and publishes it regularly to a community. Or there is some task that can benefit from being automated such as an auto moderator.

It's the malicious bots that are the most concerning.

• sincerely, not a bot

Only Greens/NDP consistently support proportional representation!

Ah, my apologies, I wasn't as clear as I should have been.

With respect to an external authoritarian take over, a strong democracy (and by proxy PR) is the best way to protect ourselves.

With respect to an internal authoritarian take over... that will require education and censorship of disinformation. FPTP hasn't been demonstrated to help with this by any means.

(Post titles are limited to 200 characters, so not all information can be conveyed in the title)

I just didn’t use the word you wanted me to use in my previous message even though we both knew that’s what I was talking about.

At this point, I honest to goodness don't know what we are talking about.

My point is that PR isn’t the panacea that some people make it sound like.

I actually agree, but that's not what we were discussing. What we were disputing was how FPTP better protects against authoritarianism, and whether this principle supersedes PR (and by proxy democracy itself).

If the population votes like idiots you still get an idiotic government. Better education and censorship of extremist ideas (like they do in French Belgium) would protect us much more than a different electoral system.

Yes, actually, this was the whole point all along!! I'm glad we agree on one thing.

Not fully preventing authoritarianism is not the same as the best way of protecting ourselves against authoritarianism.

This is an analogy: it's like saying, well, why did you get sick with a disease when you've already got vaccinated for it? Well, vaccines don't entirely limit disease, but it is the best way to protect oneself from disease.

PR doesn't entirely protect from authoritarianism, but PR (and by proxy democracy) is the best way to protect ourselves against an authoritarian takeover.

I’m just showing that PR doesn’t necessarily do that

Yes, we already had this discussion. Nobody is disputing that PR doesn't necessarily prevent authoritarianism. This isn't new information.

in the end you’re one handshake away from authoritarianism.

But you keep bringing up this separate, and unsubstantiated point. That FPTP is better than PR in terms of preventing authoritarianism? Neither electoral system are intended to prevent authoritarianism.

The closest you've gotten is that, under a specific scenario, PR would raise the seat count of an authoritarian party. But this same exact argument could be made against a direct democracy, therefore your argument isn't actually against PR, it's against democracy itself. And so I will reject your argument given that we must prioritize democracy (or what you think is a stone's throw from authoritarianism), over this unsubstantiated claim that FPTP limits extremism/authoritarianism.

You also have not demonstrated that FPTP limits authoritarianism any better than PR (not that either are really intended to). You keep conflating extremism and authoritarianism, but don't consider the nuances. Under FPTP, we already have this omnipresent extreme ideology: that not all votes should count to the outcome of an election.

Overall, PR is closer to a perfect democracy than FPTP. If you don't like everyone having the representation they are entitled to, that's more of a you problem. If you don't like people espousing specific ideologies, you should speak with them to change their minds - as you should in a healthy democracy. But trying to contort the electoral system to make political decisions (not that any electoral system are actually intended to do so), that fundamentally anti democratic.

Is this how you have conversations with people? If you can't answer something, you move the goal posts?

Anyway, you really aren't understanding the purpose of electoral systems... If the people want a particular ideology, who are you to decide that on their behalf? That's a feature, not a flaw of democracy.

PR protects against authoritarianism for the reasons explained prior: it provides true and uncompromising democratic legitimacy to the government, and vests the power in people without locking them into a two party system.

PR is not intended to prevent or even protect against authoritarianism, so I guess you got me there? But nobody was disputing that claim in the first place.

I'm at the point of wondering if you are genuinely pro-democracy, or just anti-PR -- or even perhaps putting ideology over democracy itself. In a democracy, people are deserving of and entitled to representation -- only PR can get you that. If you are unwilling to accept that fact, then perhaps you are more willing to throw democracy to the fire than I thought.

With Duverger's Law (i.e., in non-PR electoral systems, a trend towards a two-parties), we are running out of time to act. Canada's 2021 effective number of parties is 2.76 - this number will decrease over time, and will eventually end Canadian democracy as we know it today.

Who said PR protects from extremism? Not even a direct democracy would protect from extremism.

Look at what the left did in France, they got out of each other’s way and managed to block the far right.

That's not a democracy that is healthy. Electoral systems are not supposed to exclude representation that is us citizens are deserving of and are entitled to. If you want to block individuals, do that in the legislature.

I would argue that FPTP should push parties in the center to work together

This doesn't happen in theory nor practice -- it's usually a race to the bottom and very adversarial (hence party over country politics). We already have extremists from FPTP, and we will continue to have extremists in PR. But at the very least, in PR, we don't find ourselves locked into fewer and fewer viable options. You're mistaken in trying to get the electoral system to make political decisions. I have also seen this argument before.

it’s just not part of Canada’s political culture, that’s all.

Is Canada not supposed to be a democracy? And unless it's written in law, it's fair game -- that's how democracy works. Even if it's not part of Canada's political culture ... is that a reason to exclude a particular idea? It was once "part" of Canada's political culture to send indigenous person to residential schools...

At the very least, shouldn't ensuring every vote counting to the election outcome be a part of Canada's political culture? That's not too much to ask, considering it's a fundamental tenet of democracy.

You’re going off on a tangent that wasn’t part of the original discussion.

I'm literally just responding to you, lol

I’m showing that PR doesn’t prevent [authoritarian takeover]

Nobody said PR prevents authoritarian takeover, we just said it protects. And ensuring our democracy is actually representative of its people, does protect us against authoritarianism -- precisely because the power is vested in the people.

I think you need to do a lot of thinking about the functions of electoral systems. I've seen this kind of argument before -- FPTP limits extremism ... but that is far from the truth. And PR simply gets us closer to a better democracy, and yes your argument that "right" wingers get representation -- is a "flaw" with democracy not with PR.

With PR, Bernier would have had a seat, so would the conservative party in Quebec

You mean democracy would be working how it should be? That people are entitled and deserving to representation in government?

The only reason they don’t have seats is because of FPTP.

You need to establish what unique characteristic of FPTP excludes the candidates you don't like. There are plenty of "extreme" candidates that have seats that FPTP allowed in. I can think of at least 1 current representative that would vote to reverse marriage equality.

Look at Germany, the fascists now have a pretty big presence at 152 seats out of 630 and the Conservatives could just add well have made an alliance with them if they felt like it.

The task of the electoral system is not to make political decisions, but to ensure effective and proportionate representation. The legislature is the appropriate domain to handle those whose ideology you disagree with.

You've been mislead to believe that FPTP "limits" extremism, yet the most extreme, anti-democratic ideology is already omnipresent: that us citizens are not entitled nor deserving of having every vote count to the outcome of an election. Why hasn't FPTP excluded this extreme ideology?

If the parties closest to centre work together, FPTP can actually protect us from authoritarianism?

But winner-take-all systems like FPTP incentivize parties to work at the very least non-cooperatively. So the premise of your statement never happens.

Even if the parties closest to the centre work together, what characteristic unique to FPTP protects us from authoritarianism?