I signed NDP MP Catherine Bell's online petition to support proportional representation.
But I really have to object to the way she and the NDP is "marketing" this.
She has launched a Voter Equality Action Centre.
---Long sigh---
All voters are equal. They have the same right as anyone else to go to a poll on election day and secretly cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice.
Now, the voting system may be unfair. But "unjust" and "unequal" are not synonymous. It may be unfair that the government taxes me too much and makes me pay for programs and policies that I don't agree with. But I am equal nonetheless to the people who don't get taxed and who do agree with the policies.
To the left, "equality" requires "equality" of results. :roll eyes:.
I fear the word "equality" is coming to mean any situation which the left desires, and inequality is the opposite.
"Equality" is too loaded a word for promoting this effort.
If I were marketing this campaign, I would simply emphasize one thought: The results suck, let's make the system more fair.
That's an idea everyone can sign on to, right across the political spectrum.
By using ideologically-loaded phrasing, they're turning off potential supporters. The campaign looks like a ploy whose ulterior goal is to advance socialism and the NDP, not to make the electoral system more fair. The Left is framed as the champion of electoral reform, and right-wingers had better sign on to their wording and conceptualization, or else there is no campaign.
That's no way to run a successful activist campaign.
But I suspect this is lost on many NDP supporters.
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