PAIGE! 🍁
Had a read over of the comments from my recent appearance on @carastern show.
This one is interesting, you actually find the opposite with the LLMs. They’ll give you the links to research for the points supporting #ProportionalRepresentation and just say stories supporting FPTP.
I think the LLMs are so heavily biased towards ProRep because they heavily weigh more authoritative sources. If there is a conspiracy afoot, it’s those damm political scientists!
Mar 31 at 4:05amWeb
Show threadPAIGE! 🍁3d ago
@carastern this is one that reflects a understanding of ProRep as only a closed party list. This isn’t a system anyone has proposed for Canada.
Essentially, it’s a straw-man.
The reason that our politicians are so subservient is due to our electoral system. It makes creating a “Startup party” almost certainly doomed. Look at what happened to Maxime Bernier, in a proportional system he’d be in parliament running a small right wing party.
Show threadKevin Smith3d ago

@paige @carastern pure party list systems haven't been proposed but SMP based MMP has been and often seems to be implied to be the default when people talk about PR without being more specific.

SMP based MMP would be strictly worse than our current pure SMP system in terms of party discipline.

So I can see how someone would come to this conclusion, and honestly it's something that worries me too given that "PR is all that matters" framing of much electoral reform discussion that I see.

Show threadKevin Smith3d ago

@paige @carastern I see the same problem with people advocating for "ranked ballot" without being more specific with the implication they want Instant Run Off, or at best MAYBE they mean a Condorcet method but still with single seats.

Our current SMP voting system is broken in multiple completely independent ways and I rarely see this acknowledged. It's always a focus on one problem and ignoring or dismissing the other despite the existence of solutions that do a good job at both.

Show threadPAIGE! 🍁3d ago
@smithkm @carastern what does “worse” mean? Too many parties and MPs moving between them?
Show threadDaniel Brotherston3d ago

@paige @carastern this is just a cynical and very weird take.

The whole point of proportional representation is to give you a reason to vote beyond “I hate the other guy”.

But even leaving that aside the rest is just incoherent. It really makes you question democracy itself sometimes.

Show threadPAIGE! 🍁3d ago
@danbrotherston @carastern I just think it's people engaged in a team sport.
People who support or are insiders in the current system are pretty transparent.
They haven't experienced life in a normal democracy so they don't know that what has been normalized here is weird.