Saturday, May 07, 2005

Electoral Reform & NOTA

It goes without saying that most of us are disappointed with our Parliament and want to see some real change. The current set of Parliamentarians (aka Bigots and Whores Inc.) will be dealt with, more or less, in the next election. But the broader system needs a real overhaul and thats why I'm here to offer you the None Of The Above Party. The Platform is still evolving but I'll try to explain it as simply as I can. We had our third plenary meeting tonight on the corner of Varsity Dr. and 38st. It was modestly attended.

The one and only purpose of the party is to allow voters a legal place to indicate a none of the above vote. Currently Elections Canada does not allow this. With a none of the above candidate running in every riding Elections Canada would be forced to compile these votes and thus put a number to a common sentiment.

The Party does not really require a leader. We do require a spokesperson so Canadians really understand why we're running. We are in negotiations with Jolene Blalock right at the moment and it looks promising.

If elected a NOTA candidate must resign immediately and force a by-election. We reject any type of political success. Of course a NOTA candidate would run in the subsequent by-election as well. Critics of our platform note that this could force repetitive and costly by-elections, in some cases causing stalemates. This is possible but its not our fault. The other parties can break the deadlocks by finding better candidates that people can actually vote for.

Since it is impossible for NOTA to ever form Government, our membership was deeply divided over whether we should have additional policies that we advocate. It was decided that we should develop a few ideas about electoral reform and implore the winning party to adopt them.

As a safeguard, our party constitution also has a self-destruct clause. If NOTA members win enough seats to form Government then refuse to resign because they get the crazy idea that they can "fix things", then the party must instantly expel them and dissolve itself.

By a narrow margin NOTA approved the policy of Negative Voting and Personalized Vote Cancelling. Negative voting means that the voter can take a look at the ballot and say my hatred for that guy far exceeds any positive feelings for other candidates. Thus, you can apply a -1 vote to the guy you hate. By way of example, the Conservative candidate gets 30,000 votes but 25,000 voters apply negative votes against him, thus his real and final vote total is 5000 votes. We think this will make candidates behave differently.

Personalized vote cancelling involves matching up opposite voters in a personal way. If one guy votes Conservative and another guy Liberal the person who votes last is deemed to have cancelled out the other guys vote. Elections Canada would assign opposing voters to each other. Then they would send letters to each person explaining that they were now partnered in the Electoral System. The voters would get each others phone number and address and Elections Canada would encourage them to dialogue. We feel this has potential for real nation building.

We wanted to look at some other policies but it got dark. Please recommend this post

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