Needed a TV debate on MMP.

Sometimes the National Post has useful material! The POst has been trying hard to stimulate interest in the referendum. It is too bad that the Ontario Elections material does not promote more material on both sides of the debate rather than just explaining the system.

Needed: a TV debate on Ontario's MMP referendum
-- Richard Pilon, National Post

On Oct. 10, in addition to electing legislative representatives, Ontario voters will cast a ballot in the first referendum in the province since 1924. Voters will have to decide whether to keep the existing single-member plurality voting system or switch to a mixed member proportional (MMP) system, as recommended by the Ontario Citizens' Assembly. The decision could have a major impact on Ontario politics, altering the competitive dynamic of elections, the process of government formation and the diversity of representatives that get into Queen's Park. It may just be the most important vote in the history of the province.

But as the vote approaches, a serious problem has emerged: The voters don't seem to know anything about the referendum. They don't even know that a referendum will be held. Something needs to be done, and quick, to avert disaster.

For this referendum to be meaningful, voters need to know the basic pros and cons of the choices on offer. They should know, for instance, that the legislatures elected by our current riding-by-riding plurality system generally do not accurately reflect overall voter support for the various political parties, and that the current system regularly yields majority governments even when the most popular party gets far less than 50% of the overall vote.

On the other hand, as its supporters claim, the current system does produce stable majority governments. The alternative MMP voting system would be more likely to produce more minority or coalition governments.

There are activists and academics on both sides. Voters should be hearing what arguments they have to make so that they can decide for themselves.

The problem Ontario is facing is hardly a new one. This will be the third voting system referendum in Canada in just two years. As such, Ontario might reasonably be expected to have learned something from the mistakes that were made in other jurisdictions.

For instance, in 2005, Prince Edward Island held a public vote on its electoral system. The results were a disaster. The public was not educated about the choices, the media refused to spend much time on the issue and the government kept changing the rules about what would constitute victory right up to the last week of the campaign.

Things were better in British Columbia's 2005 referendum on its voting system -- but only slightly. Here, too, the government refused to fund a proper public education effort, and the media also tended to ignore the issue. As a result, just before election day, polling revealed that very few people knew what the referendum was about.

Apprised of these past problems, the Ontario government promised things would be different. For instance, Elections Ontario has been given millions of dollars to fashion a public information campaign, one featuring newspaper and radio ads and a pamphlet that will be delivered to voters' homes.

But, despite the money, the public is not getting the message. The fault lies largely with Elections Ontario's so-called "neutral" approach. Their literature focuses on the technical details of the different voting systems and avoids spelling out the substantive debate surrounding the issue, which is the information voters need to make up their minds. They even refused to provide the original Ontario Citizens' Assembly's rationale for recommending the MMP system in the first place.

No wonder people report ignorance about the referendum: They don't know why they should care about it.

The frustrating thing about the decisions by Elections Ontario is that they did not lack for better models of public engagement. In New Zealand, which faced a similar vote more than a decade ago, the independent body charged with educating the public about the issue used television and radio programs to get their message across, and they did not shy away from the debate surrounding the proposals. The results were impressive. Public knowledge was very high by the time election day arrived.

With just over a week to go before Ontario's referendum, time is running out to get the public up to speed on this issue. But there is one way to dramatically increase its visibility: Schedule an 11th-hour televised debate between the defenders of the status quo plurality voting system and the supporters of the Citizens' Assembly's MMP model.

At election time, networks already offer political parties a chance to talk directly to the public in a debate format as a kind of public service. As there will also be a referendum ballot this time around, it only makes sense for the networks to do the same for the referendum.

It's time for Ontario's broadcasters to step in and fix what the government has bungled. A TV debate on this referendum would perform a valuable public service

pilon@uvic.ca

-Dennis Pilon is an assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Victoria and the author of The Politics of Voting:Reforming Canada's Electoral System.