Voter education more important than system
Ignorance, as the saying goes, is bliss. While it may be true in some circumstances, when it comes to knowledge of our electoral system, alas, widespread ignorance is anything but bliss.

It accounts, more than any other factor, for the woefully low turnouts in elections at all three levels, and this ignorance exists mainly because we do next to nothing to promote knowledge of and interest in our political system.

Typically, in response to a situation which politicians did more than anybody else to create, their solution is to create a new, less democratic system, rather than attack the obvious problem of our existing system. For those of you who don't know - and a recent Environics poll found that 70 per cent of Ontarians don't know it - you won't be just electing a new provincial government when you trudge off to the polls on Oct. 10, you'll also be given a choice of two different electoral systems for the future.

Voters - at least those who bother to show up - will be asked the following question on their ballot:

"Which electoral system should Ontario use to elect members to the provincial legislature? The existing electoral system (first-past-the-post)" or "the alternative electoral system proposed by the citizens' assembly (mixed member proportional)."

The impetus for a new system clearly flows from the continuing poor turnouts at elections - the other major argument against the current system is that majority governments are formed even though they often garner only 40 per cent or so of the votes cast.

No system is perfect, of course. But for me, our current system has it all over the proposed MMP (mixed member proportional) for a host of reasons. What the October ballot won't tell you is that the MMP system will result in considerably more politicians at Queen's Park. Even worse, many of them won' t be elected by you but instead will be chosen from a list of party "representatives" chosen in the back rooms of the political parties themselves.

What's more, this system will almost certainly guarantee perpetual minority governments, which is why, of course, parties such as the NDP, which can never win under our current system, are so enamored with a system which would allow them to wield far more influence over government than the electorate would want them to have.

If the politicians - and the so-called "citizens assembly" (sounds really official doesn't it?) which proposed this MMP - really wanted to make the process fair, they'd adopt a system used in many countries, France for example, where a run-off is held between the top two finishers if nobody wins a majority outright. That way, you get a clear, democratically-elected winner.

But minority activists don't want that because they know they'd never win.

They want to foist a less-democratic and bureaucratically cumbersome system on us, dress it up with a fancy name, credit an all-knowing "citizens' committee" with the idea, and hope you are dumb enough to fall for it.

And given the widespread ignorance of our current system, it's a real possibility.

Why is the new system "less" democratic than the current one? Well, unlike the existing system which, whatever its' faults, at least allows voters to elect their "representatives" directly, voters under MMP would cast two votes - one for a local member, the other for the party of their choice.

After the votes were counted, each party would be allocated members matching their percentage of the vote.

Sounds pretty democratic so far, eh? The problem is - and MMP advocates don't like to talk about it - is that these party "representatives" would come from a list drawn up by party hacks in private and then be given the same status as representatives who were actually elected directly.

Representation by backroom stealth is no my idea of democracy. How about you?

Rather than play games, our politicians should be taking serious steps to make sure that the public actually knows something about our system.

Numerous studies show clearly that there is a direct connection between more understanding of the system and better electoral turnouts. Yet only three provinces even require a course in Canadian history for high school graduation.

Is it any wonder that a recent Dominion Institute survey discovered that only one-third of those asked could name the four political parties currently represented in Ottawa, only about half as many who answered the same question a decade ago?

It's particularly urgent in Ontario, given our enormous influx of immigration, that we provide civic information - at the very least to the school kids - if we ever want to get back up to the levels of voter turnout our forefathers enjoyed.

Until we do that, bringing in an even more complicated system will just make matters worse.