Referendum is important

I'm writing in about Claire Hoy's recent article - "Voter education more important than system."

He gets it right when he says that "No system is perfect," but the referendum Oct. 10 is about which system is better. Under our current system, a party that wins 40 per cent of all votes can get 60 per cent of the seats and 100 per cent of the power. Wouldn't it make more sense for a party that wins 40 per cent of the votes to get 40 per cent of the seats? That's what MMP will do.

Claire thinks that party lists will be a haven for party hacks. But if you asked any party representative in Ontario whether they would nominate their lists undemocratically, they would respond "of course not!" They know that voters would punish them for this sort of behaviour.

Another interesting prediction is that our government will be in forever deadlocked, or that we'll have elections every 1.5 years. But Germany, a country which uses a variant of the proposed voting system, has had just as many elections as we have in the past 60 years and their parliament is at least as functional as ours.

The people of Ontario are smart. They can see that a system that gives them more choice, fairer results and stronger representation is clearly the better system. They know that Mixed Member Proportional serves the voters' interests better than First-Past-The- Post and puts the power firmly in the hands of the electorate. On Oct. 10, vote for MMP.

Derek Kraan

Waterloo