Your continued cherry-picking of specific countries while ignoring the fundamental issue of democratic representation is telling.
First, electoral reform isn’t just “my” pressing issue - 76% of Canadians support electoral reform. This overwhelming support exists because millions of citizens recognize their votes are systematically discarded under our current system.
As for Germany and Italy, you’re mischaracterizing how PR functions in these countries. In Germany, the AfD has representation proportional to their actual support, while coalition dynamics have successfully kept them from power. Their support would exist under any electoral system - PR simply makes it visible rather than hidden within a mainstream party.
Meanwhile, PR countries like New Zealand, the Nordic nations, and many others consistently outperform FPTP countries on measures of economic equality, social welfare, and policy stability. Your selective examples ignore this broader evidence.
The core issue remains: in Ontario’s last election, the PCs formed a “majority” government with just 43% of the vote. Under FPTP, 57% of voters who explicitly rejected them have no meaningful representation. How is this democratic?
What you call “dodging a bullet” is actually dodging democracy itself. A system where every vote contributes meaningfully to representation isn’t a radical idea - it’s a fundamental democratic principle. When you oppose this principle, what you’re really saying is that some citizens deserve representation while others don’t, based solely on where they live or who they support.
The mathematical reality is undeniable: PR produces governments that more accurately reflect how people actually vote. This isn’t a minor technical detail - it’s the entire purpose of representative democracy.
We’ve already gone over the merits of PR and I’ve politely shown you why PR doesn’t seem to be a great choice. (For anyone interested, I’ve given this person a boatload of time to hear these same tired points over and over again. https://lemmy.ca/post/40556342/15124577)
tl;dr: Despite cries of cherrypicking (which seems absurd given that our G7 peers are probably the best comparisons, though you could also look at Austria, Netherlands, Poland etc to see PR going so poorly that people are giving up and turning the extreme right. Basically, it comes down to what you think Democracy is for? If it’s to produce good governments that benefit their people, I think our system seems to be doing a better job than PR has recently (Personally, I think polarization, less informed populaces and the emergence of a bunch of serious problems in rapid succession have made a system based on coalitions much more difficult) whereas this person seems to believe the only thing that matters is getting the most accurate reflection of how people vote (though, oddly, hates some forms of PR like Israel’s even if they are more representative of how people vote. I guess it’s vote representation is all that matters until the examples don’t look good.)
Edit: OP also seems to have responded then locked the thread to prevent a response. For anyone who manages to get through the pages of silliness.
Electoral reform is not the most pressing issue, it is your most pressing issue, which is very different.
And as we’ve discussed, given how well PR is going in our G7 peers like Germany and Italy, goodness gracious I’m glad we dodged that bullet.
Your continued cherry-picking of specific countries while ignoring the fundamental issue of democratic representation is telling.
First, electoral reform isn’t just “my” pressing issue - 76% of Canadians support electoral reform. This overwhelming support exists because millions of citizens recognize their votes are systematically discarded under our current system.
As for Germany and Italy, you’re mischaracterizing how PR functions in these countries. In Germany, the AfD has representation proportional to their actual support, while coalition dynamics have successfully kept them from power. Their support would exist under any electoral system - PR simply makes it visible rather than hidden within a mainstream party.
Meanwhile, PR countries like New Zealand, the Nordic nations, and many others consistently outperform FPTP countries on measures of economic equality, social welfare, and policy stability. Your selective examples ignore this broader evidence.
The core issue remains: in Ontario’s last election, the PCs formed a “majority” government with just 43% of the vote. Under FPTP, 57% of voters who explicitly rejected them have no meaningful representation. How is this democratic?
What you call “dodging a bullet” is actually dodging democracy itself. A system where every vote contributes meaningfully to representation isn’t a radical idea - it’s a fundamental democratic principle. When you oppose this principle, what you’re really saying is that some citizens deserve representation while others don’t, based solely on where they live or who they support.
The mathematical reality is undeniable: PR produces governments that more accurately reflect how people actually vote. This isn’t a minor technical detail - it’s the entire purpose of representative democracy.
For this election, electoral reform isn’t making it into the top 5 or 10 in any poll I’ve seen, feel free to share something contrary! (It’s sort of like climate, many people are in favour of climate legislation but it’s not top of mind for this election.)
We’ve already gone over the merits of PR and I’ve politely shown you why PR doesn’t seem to be a great choice. (For anyone interested, I’ve given this person a boatload of time to hear these same tired points over and over again. https://lemmy.ca/post/40556342/15124577)
tl;dr: Despite cries of cherrypicking (which seems absurd given that our G7 peers are probably the best comparisons, though you could also look at Austria, Netherlands, Poland etc to see PR going so poorly that people are giving up and turning the extreme right. Basically, it comes down to what you think Democracy is for? If it’s to produce good governments that benefit their people, I think our system seems to be doing a better job than PR has recently (Personally, I think polarization, less informed populaces and the emergence of a bunch of serious problems in rapid succession have made a system based on coalitions much more difficult) whereas this person seems to believe the only thing that matters is getting the most accurate reflection of how people vote (though, oddly, hates some forms of PR like Israel’s even if they are more representative of how people vote. I guess it’s vote representation is all that matters until the examples don’t look good.)
Edit: OP also seems to have responded then locked the thread to prevent a response. For anyone who manages to get through the pages of silliness.