DemocraticSpace has a good post on Proportional Representation that responds to Richard Gwyn's column.
Gwyn also objects to voters not being able to choose their own list candidates. Gwyn wants us to believe is that voters today are actually endorsing the local candidate when they cast their ballot. But we know that 60-65% of people vote by party and another 20% vote by party leader (potential premier or prime minister). Only about 15-20% of people actually decide how to cast their ballot because of the local candidate. So 80-85% of today’s ballots are cast by party, not by local candidate. And that means for 80-85% of us, we don’t have a choice which local candidate we want. But electoral reform changes that.
It's very important the people who support proportional representation promote the idea because the McGuinty government will not campaign in favour of it, and 60% of the population must approve of the new system in order for it to be implemented.
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