Hell Bent for Election
Elections and political parties should disappear, but there are still reasons to vote.
So the provincial election is on, soon after I spent some weeks bothering the wussies of Fair Vote Canada over their adherence to the idea that voting reform will actually reform anything. Yet I am urging people to get out and vote in the election. Keep reading and I shall resolve this contradiction.
If you have read my recent blogs, they are about my latest attempt to run for the board of Fair Vote Canada (FVC). They are really just my recycled campaign literature. These are the people who want Canada to switch federal and provincial legislatures from the majoritarian “first past the post” system we have, to the “proportional representation” (PR) most parliamentary democracies use.
I will not be able to even run for the board of FVC this year. They only want to allow fifteen people to run otherwise it would get too confusing. Last year fourteen people wanted to run, including me. This year they had thirty three who wanted to be on their board. So they had to cut down the list by some sort of process. Uh, huh…
There are four problematic things about these people. First is that they will never decide on an optimal voting system for Canada’s conditions. Instead, in debate on debate, referendum after referendum, they want only to discuss the theory of proportional elections. The public predictably throws the issue back to them.
The second is that they never strongly oppose, and at times seem to be endorsing, something called ranked ballots. This is the gimmick of the Liberal party deep apparatchiks, which they think will insure Liberal governments forever. This is, simply, the voters ranking the candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate gets a majority of first choice votes, then second, third, or fourth choices are added until somebody has fifty percent.
Third is that local government does not seem to exist for them. This seems to go with the idea ‘middle Canadians’ have that local governments are ‘creatures of the provinces’ and of no importance. So democracy and voting systems in local government are not worth discussing.
The thing about FVC people which most concerns me is the blindness to the way representative democracies have been going for the past decade. Twenty years ago it could have been argued that adopting the proportional systems used in most of Europe could lead to better government. In recent years these governments have become about as incompetent and unresponsive to public will as those in North America or anywhere else.
My real object in engaging with FVC has been to get these people to ask themselves whether they are over selling the potential benefits of PR. It does not really solve the problems they hold it as the solution for. They need to look deeper at what the real problem is with representative government.
My thesis has been that representative democracy is not real democracy. Elections and political parties are a plan for oligarchy. All the voters get to decide in elections is which oligarchic faction they will align with. Those who own everything including the media decide who can even get into the elections game.
Real democracy has always been done using things like citizens assemblies, consultas, delegates to higher assemblies, plebescites, bodies chosen by sortition; ie random selection, and so on. The idea of representative democracy is fairly new. A century ago in most of Europe it was imposed on populations who had wanted a direct democracy.
In recent years, as it becomes clear to more people that we are not in a real democracy, these kinds of institutions are being pulled out of the memory hole and examined. People in Canada are relatively late to this. It is amusing that some FVC activists have the idea that a citizen’s assembly should be convened to decide how to implement PR in Canada.
There could be no better example of getting a process out of order. However the future plays out in Canada, the citizen’s assembly, properly called a constituent assembly because it is deciding a constitution, will come last. By that point PR will be considered quaint.
We will likely not get to that point by any electoral process. That is not a reason to not vote. I am not someone saying “don’t vote, it only encourages the bastards.” However, the reasons to vote have nothing to do with any expectation of getting your interests represented or getting a more competent government.
Vote for a candidate, not for a political party. You want a good “riding based” member of provincial parliament who can solve problems for your community and bring resources to it. What party this person belongs to is of little relevance although they seem to come less often from the conservatives. They come more often from the NDP, which I suspect is the main reason that party survives.
There is your reason to go out and mark up a ballot. It is even a reason to donate some money to a campaign, or help out with it. You should make sure that your contribution goes to the candidate, not to his or her party.
There is one other reason to try to have a good, conscientious person as a representative. A feature of Canadian politics is that representatives are tightly controlled by their party leaders. Caucus revolts happen in other parliamentary systems, not here. However, this could change.
We are headed for a breakdown in Canada. We are headed there more slowly than most other western ‘democracies’. We can look at how it happens in these other countries for hints at what to do about it here.
When this breakdown occurs and a change can no longer be avoided, events will almost certainly include a rebellion of the country’s legislators, at all levels. At some point they will just throw up their hands at what they are being told to authorize. They will tell their leaders where to go and start making their own decisions and alliances.
Thus it is important to have a good number of honest and socially oriented people in legislatures. They will not be able to change things on their own, the forces driving society down are very powerful. But they would likely act as a rallying point and as resources.
There is no solution for the failure of the present system within its own rules. There is not even a strong movement at present with any clear idea of a way beyond. There is no public consensus as to the cause of the malaise or its solution.
Party leaders and government leaders have no ideas at all. Thus they have less authority all the time and are pushed around by special interests. This is what makes the present situation is so frightening; things could so easily go in a very bad way.
However, a few themes are emerging from the chaos which could coalesce into a movement in a good direction. I find two to be particularly encouraging. First is that more people are realizing the need to abolish capitalism but without getting lost in the various forms of fossilized Marxism.
Second, and especially appealing to me, is that more people are starting to recognize the necessity of going to a direct democracy. There is of course, also the need to realize that democracy and capitalism are not going to coexist. More people are getting this point as well.
But right now, the provincial election is on. The horses are racing.
None of the parties in the race are the slightest bit impressive. None of the party leaders are remotely qualified for the positions they are seeking. There is not the slightest chance any of them would be able to do what the public really wants and needs even if they wanted to.
The most important thing to notice is that all these parties have been in power in other provinces. All have carried out the same agenda regarding the covid pandemic. None of them will protect the Ontario public from it if elected.
All of these parties represent different and competing factions of the ruling classes. The only reason we are going through this clown show through to June second is that these elites have no better way of dividing up power among themselves. As well, they still need some pretence that the system reflects the public will.
A final question which could be asked is whether forming a new political party would be a viable solution. Such a party would have to be a very strange one; dedicated to dismantling the system which brought it expects to bring it into power.
I think this is just possible in Canada. It is not as bad here as in the USA, where the two parties have made very sure that no third party will be able to break through. In Europe, it is being shown that one of the advantages PR offers to the oligarchy is that any reforming party would have to get over half the vote to be able to revise the county’s constitution.
A new Canadian party dedicated to moving to direct democracy could possibly get the power to do it with a third of the vote. Oops! I have just found a reason to keep “first past the post” around for awhile.
For such a ‘transformational’ party to put itself together and win office in the time frame which would be necessary, would be an incredible feat of organization. It would have to do this in the face of a ferocious campaign to disrupt and demonize it. Yet it is possible if the right leaders were available.
Then there really would be a point to voting for a political party. That is, so it is the last time we would have to go through that nonsense. Then we would also hear no more of FVC.
That is, unless it followed my sage advice and began to study the modalities of sortition and delegation as intensely as they have PR. Then they would have some advice to offer about building the new governance systems.
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