Tag Archives: RaBIT

Voting Reform’s Easy. You’re Just Lazy.

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As the newly self-appointed electoral reform voice here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, my first task is to do the exact opposite of what advocacy advocates would advise doing. I am going to attack and deride the very people whose opinion I plan to sway. I fully expect the powers that be over at RaBIT and Fair Vote Canada to be in contact with me soon asking my assistance in helping plan strategy and pen informational publications.

You see, to my mind the biggest obstacle to having a serious debate about the need to change the way we elect our governments is the prevailing disinterest in the subject on the part of the general public. Lulled into a disquieted slumber by those who abhor change or who benefit greatly from the status quo, too many voters wave off any discussion about voting reform as just more politics. Politics, politics, politics.

It’s this apathetic indifference that supporters of our current, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system exploit. Their main argument in favour of how we do things now revolves around stability. Our system tends to elect majority governments despite rarely an absolute majority actually voting for the winning party and with majority governments comes 4 years or so of one-party, stable governing. Go back to sleep, public. We’ll wake you again in 4 years or so.

Without stable majority governments, the argument goes, we exist on the brink of chaos. Look at Italy! And disregard all the other European countries that have moved on to various forms of real proportional representation. Or look at our own situation in Canada for the past 7 years. Gridlock rife with more partisan bickering than actual governance. Never mind that it’s really the lure of an oh-so-close majority situation that drives the Harper Government. (Huh. My spell check just changed ‘Canadian’ Government to ‘Harper’ Government. Strange). That counter-intuitively undemocratic 40% popular vote bar that would elect them over 50% of the seats and 100% control of the government.

Screw democracy. We need stability.

So much is made of minority governments leading to an increased number of unnecessary elections. How, without the constancy of majority governments, we’ll be dragged incessantly to the polls, against our collective wills, like the Chinese Communist Long March of 1934/5, through snow (bad), the heat of summer (bad), the Christmas season (really, really bad). Spring’s OK but can we go later when the weather’s better but not too good because the bright sunshine and blue skies absolutely drains me of my will to vote.

Since when have elections become such an onerous burden to bear? What exactly is it about them that makes the public feel so put upon? Is it because we have to actually pay attention to what’s going on, to what our politicians are saying? We don’t. Nobody forces us to participate. Rarely does political coverage preempt Canadian Idol or Celebrity Apprentice. We can all go about our regular routines, paying absolutely no attention to that stranger at our door, offering more junk mail and wanting to know what we think about the long form census.

To walk amongst the tall reeds of cliché for a moment, because that’s what one does with clichés, walk amongst the tall reeds, carrying stones in your coat pocket, people are dying out there for the right of self-determination that comes with free and fair elections. Not figuratively dying. Literally dying. And we get our noses out of joint if we have to go vote more than every other year? OMG, if a federal election gets called in the spring that means Ontarians will be going to the polls 3 times in one year by the time the scheduled provincial election is done in October! The horror! The horror!

Why do you always end up making me yell at you, people? I just wanted to talk about electoral reform, is all. There is a better way to elect our representatives at every level of government.

Our current method is not only not working, it is robbing us of true democracy where a minority of voters regularly elects a majority government that represents far less than half of us. No wonder so many of us are jaded with politics, apathetic and figure our votes don’t matter. More often than not, they don’t. So why bother? Why bother even following along?

So the system itself makes us sick of it.

None of it, however, is set in stone. Nowhere is it written that we have to vote like we do, conduct elections like we do. Plenty of countries and jurisdictions have moved on to other, fairer ways of electing their representatives and the sky hasn’t fallen or the earth stopped revolving around the sun. Our very leaders who ask us to cast ballots for them in a fundamentally anti-democratic fashion in all likelihood assumed the top job of their respective parties through alternative voting or ranked ballots. There is a disconnect there that should disturb us all.

But those already in power are not going to step up and start the discussion about electoral reform. Reform that would very possibly divest them of the absolutism that they have grown to expect and demand. We have to get the ball rolling. We have to get excited again (or maybe for the first time) about politics and the opportunity to make real, positive change.

We have to stop being idle and pointing at others for the reason we aren’t engaged. It’s a cop out and a drag, man. Wake up, sleepyheads. Let’s take our politics back.

— rousingly submitted by Urban Sophisticat

Back In The Game

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Not all that long ago, as recently as the waning days of 2009 in fact, I was happily living my life as a self-identified political apathete. Cocooned in a warm, fuzzy coating of ‘They’re all the same’, I voted when I had to and with very little enthusiasm. Calling myself a Red Tory to anyone who asked, I failed to recognize I’d become a species near the brink of extinction and that almost the entire right side of the spectrum had been slowly consumed by what can only be described as a brand of radical conservatism.

Then I went and did something stupid like sign on to All Fired Up in the Big Smoke and become involved, active and aware during last year’s municipal election campaign. I honestly believed I could bring a dispassionate, rational voice to the site but as things progressed… or maybe that should be, regressed… out on the hustings, it was a stance that became more and more untenable. Disregard grew into disbelief that morphed into shock, anger, fear until, ultimately, at the race’s conclusion, a little bit of my soul died.

“This is why you shouldn’t put yourself out there,” I thought to myself afterwards. “It can all turn out so horribly, horribly badly… bad? Badly?” Don’t like the sound of ‘badly’ in that context but ‘bad’ is in all likelihood incorrect.

So, I fled. In hopes of rediscovering my old self. My old, disinterested, apolitical self.

I took to the seas. I took to the bottle. I took to my knees to pray that it had all just been one bad dream. All to no avail. I was hooked. I’d become a junkie of the worst kind. The political kind. I can’t quit you, Toronto municipal politics!

Once having acknowledged and accepted that fact, I found myself face-to-face with a dilemma. By the time I turned my attention back to City Hall, it had become something of a partisan hellhole. Serious battle lines drawn. Whatever divisions that had manifested themselves during the election were, by the time Mayor Ford was sworn into office, deep to the point of moat-like. While my colleague Cityslikr seems to be quite content wallowing in such a nest of vipers, the thought of joining him struck me as wholly unappealing. Surely there was a way to make a more positive, satisfying contribution.

And there is. Voting/electoral/ballot reform.

If you hadn’t noticed, things are horribly out of whack on that front here in Toronto. In a couple great posts back in January, John Michael McGrath dug into the grisly details of highly disproportionate wards where some councillors are buried deep in constituent work while others have a lighter workload and have additional time to offer help, sometimes unasked, in other wards and do regular radio spots. It is a situation that seriously undermines the notion of one person, one vote that we like to believe sits at the heart of our democratic system.

While adjusting boundaries to more equitably distribute numbers throughout the city’s wards, there’s also a deeper fundamental change that needs exploring. Since amalgamation and the elimination of Metro Council, Toronto has suffered under a lack of city wide vision. Only the mayor is elected by voters throughout the city. So he (and it’s only been a ‘he’ since we became the megacity) sets an agenda for the entire city and must contend with the views and opinions of 44 councillors whose priorities for their constituents oftentimes sit in direct opposition to a broader view. For example? We all know that increased density is a must for our future well being. Yet where do we start developing? As the battle at Lawrence Heights shows, communities may see the need for more density but they don’t necessarily want it near them.

At the same time, there’s also a growing demand for a strengthening of local input into decisions being made at City Hall. This suggests we should look at giving more powers to our community councils. Not only would this foster an increase in citizen participation but it would also relieve the burden on city council to spend their time debating and voting on such hyper-local issues as extending liquor license hours to Paddy McMuldoon’s Irish Emporium Pub for St. Patrick’s Day or if a tree needs to be cut down in Ward Wherever.

All of which points to not only such electoral reform issues as at-large councilors and the like but actual improvements in voting. Yes, I’m talking about the bogeyman of proportional representation and changing how we cast our ballots. It is long overdue and we need to stop ignoring the claims of over-complexity that inevitably arise from the political class that has benefited from our current, first-past-the-post system. Arguably, this is something we could do most easily at the municipal level, owing to the fact we are officially party-less. Time is of the essence and new rules have to be in place soon in order that the can come into effect for the next municipal election.

Of course, this is all easier said than done. Not only do reform-minded people have to contend with entrenched status quoers but there is a divide within the ranks of the reform movement itself. It’s a clash of ideas that was captured nicely last month by Jake Tobin Garrett over at Spacing and, unfortunately one that can be used by opponents to argue for doing nothing.

But that really isn’t an option. Voters continue to be disengaged from the process and campaigns at every level are rarely fought over issues. The first-past-the-post system seems to encourage negative, I’m-not-as-bad-as-the-other-guys races and a clawing for a mere simple majority usually leads to more voters casting ballots against the ultimate winner. And as we can see by watching recent events in Ottawa as well as City Hall here in Toronto, negative campaigning moves directly into negative governing.

So I begin the initial steps of understanding alternative ways of electing our representatives. What I do feel strongly about right now is that Mayor Ford’s campaign pledge of cutting council in half is a non-starter. It will only increase our democratic deficit and his argument that since we only have 22 MPs and MPPs we only need 22 councillors displays a monumental ignorance about the difference between the services delivered to the public by their councillors and by their representatives at Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill.

Secondly, what we need to demand right now is the ability to elect our municipal officials by a ranked ballot. For a primer on what exactly that is, I highly encourage you to read over what the folks have to say over at RaBIT. I know this wades right into the controversy over alternative voting versus true proportional representation (about which you should also read at Fair Vote Canada) but 21 of the 45 people making decisions for us at City Hall were elected with less than an absolute majority of votes. In fact, 5 of our councillors had less than a third of their ward voters actually cast a ballot for them. So we have the ludicrous scenario of someone like Councillor James Pasternak standing up at council, claiming to speak for his ward when, in fact, less than 1 in 5 of the voters in Ward 10 who chose to cast a ballot, voted for Mr. Pasternak.

That ain’t democracy, folks. It’s time for a real change. And that’s what I intend to dedicate my time to, back here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke.

— submitted by Urban Sophisticat

Old Friends Reacquainted

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Why do these things always happen on weekends? Prepped for a couple lazy days of kicking back and doing a whole lot of nothing, maybe catching up on some reading, a movie or two; indulge in an extended wine tasting. Go time on me time.And then the phone rings. And rings. And rings.

There’s no ignoring it, ultimately. It’s not in my nature. A ringing phone must be answered regardless of the technological advances made in allowing us to avoid engaging.

Because of this weakness of fortitude, my weekend unfolded in the most unexpected manner… which, in looking at it, really should’ve been the first sentence of this post. A tweak here and there and it would be a killer opening line.

The caller ID offers no assistance. It’s a name I don’t recognize. Perhaps without the extra spicy, extra strong Bloody Caesar under my belt I would’ve let it go to voice mail. I’m feeling magnanimous, inclined to reach out and touch somebody and not in any sort of creepy way.

It’s Mrs. _________, you don’t know me but I’m the downstairs neighbour of ________. ________? Who the fuck is _________? (I only swear retrospectively, telling the story to you.) Oh, wait. You mean, Urban Sophisticat!

You remember Urban Sophisticat. Long lost colleague, hightailed it out of here not long after the day infamy, October 25th, when the city he loved lost its collective mind and voted Rob Ford to be mayor. If you’ve only just recently joined us here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, allow me to submit his last appearance for your reading pleasure.

He up and left for sunnier climes and the boating life. Our very own George Clooney living la vida loca Mediterranean style. Or so I thought. I mean, he sent a postcard claiming as much.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Mrs. _________ tells me over the phone. “He’s here. But acting very, very strange.” Strange, you say. Strange how? “I haven’t seen him for a week now. Maybe two. And there’s this smell…”

Oh, god. The Smell.

And why was his neighbour calling me anyway? He had family in town all over the place. Let them deal with his rotting corpse. Urban Sophisticat had been dead to me for months now. I’d long since buried him.

“There was a note under my door this morning,” Mrs. ________ says. “Asking me to summon Cityslikr. That’s you, right? Cityslikr?”

Summon Cityslikr? OK. This, I had to take part in.

Arriving outside his door and, yes the stench was more than a little disagreeable. But even if Urban Sophisticat had died since slipping the note under his neighbour’s door, he couldn’t be decomposing this badly, this quickly, could he? Besides, there was a hint of cumin… no, wait… cardamom in the stench. Is that what decaying flesh smells like?

I knocked at the door. It took long enough for a response that I almost left, thinking why would I expect a dead guy to answer the door anyway. Then the door opened.

I turned to see Urban Sophisticat already heading away from me, back into his place. He hadn’t said a word. By the time I walked in, he was sitting in a chair in the living room, looking not unlike Michael Corleone near the end of The Godfather II just after hearing the gunshot that killed his brother in a hit he’d ordered. And there was that smell.

“What the fuck is that stink?” I asked.

“I’m fermenting lentils.” Urban Sophisticat just stared at me and clearly wasn’t about to tell me why. The ensuing silence became a little annoying, I must admit. I chose not to pursue the lentil line of questioning and instead inquired into his whereabouts over the last 4 months or so.

“I thought you were sailing off in the Mediterranean,” I said. “What are you doing—“

He waved me off, with clearly bigger fish to fry which wouldn’t be a bad idea if it could mask the stink of lentils long past their best before date.

“I needed you to think that,” he says matter of factly as if no further explanation was necessary. It was.

“Why?”

“We needed time apart.”

Clearly there was going to be no making sense of him. I’d made a terrible mistake coming. But this was the kind of erratic behavior to expect from my other colleague, Acaphlegmic, not Urban Sophisticat.

“I probably should be going,” I told him. Before I could turn back toward the door, Urban Sophisticat got out of his chair and walked toward me as if he was walking on water or some sort of fragile surface that might break under his weight if he stepped down to forcefully. Almost gliding.

When he got close, he lifted his arms and grabbed me by both shoulders and looked deep into my eyes. I won’t lie. I start to giggle, semi-nervously.

Was he really going to take my head in his hands and kiss me? “It was you, Fredo. I know it was you,” I was fully expecting him to say. Instead, he just continued to stare at me in dire earnestness.

“We failed miserably, you and I,” I’m told finally. “We paddled hard against the tide but were washed ashore by a rogue wave of unrighteous indignation and misguided populism.”

He started to squeeze my head. Combined with the lentil stench, I was getting more than a little nauseous. I refused to show any sign of discomfort, however. That would give Urban Sophisticat the upper hand which is something I categorically could not bring myself to do. Ever.

“But in defeat,” he continued, “we must become warriors. Warriors of change. Warriors for change.”

“Whphfedleshdamyhthdsss,” I asked through painfully compressed cheeks.

“What?”

Taking control of the situation, I pushed him back away from me. “What are you talking about? And what’s with the lentils, dude?! Seriously. I’m going to pass out here.”

Urban Sophisticat returned to his chair and sat down.

“It’s time to talk electoral reform, my friend,” he informs me. “Toronto does not have a spending problem. Toronto has an electing problem. I want to be your point man on this. I want to be All Fired Up in the Big Smoke’s ground zero for election and voting initiatives. Unless you grant me that, I won’t come back. This thing between us? It’ll be over.”

It’s not that I disagreed with his sentiments on the issue. Voting reform was long passed due. I had never said otherwise which made this whole display on my colleague’s part unnecessary and so over-the-top.

“Who’s stopping you?” I asked. “Write away.”

Urban Sophisticat looked hard at me, as if I were lying.

“What? Start the conversation. You have carte blanch.”

“Really?” he asked. “And can I have the title of Electoral Reformer in my posts?”

“If it makes you less nuts, I’ll call you Electoral Reformer King.”

Urban Sophisticat sat back in his chair, looking satisfied as if he’d just squeezed a major concession from me.

“But whatever it is you’re doing with those lentils, it stays here. I don’t ever want to smell that smell again.”

With that, I turned and fled the premises. My weekend ruined by the stink of rotting lentils. An aroma that will forever be associated with the notion of electoral reform. But as I think a great suffragette once said: change is never easy and it never smells quite right at the beginning.

— wretchingly submitted by Cityslikr