I just got a message on Facebook from Ray Lam, the NDP candidate for Gregor's old seat in vancouver-Fairview. Ray seems like a nice guy, but my political views don't mesh well with the BC NDP party particularly well. I wrote this reply to him, and have decided to publish this as an open letter to any NDP candidate:
Hi Ray,
My priorities are electoral reform, and I strongly support a Ward system in Vancouver as well as the BC STV proposal. Do you?
Maciej Cegłowski ( the erudite writer / painter / web hacker behind my favorite blog ever, 'idle words' ) made this cute site called 'The Wrong Tomorrow' where he posts predictions by pundits and tracks when, er, if they are wrong:
Should be fun to track as time goes on; I note with some glee that Scoble is the first failure. Mind you, Scoble was hardle making predictions about economic recovery, was he?
That's what the last couple of weeks in Canadian Politics has been for me. Basically, every single person involved did quite likely the *wrong* thing:
A couple of years ago ( during the last BC Election ) a majority of voters ( but not quite enough ) voted in favor of an electoral reform package called STV or Single Transferal Vote. STV came close enough to being voted in that we're going to get another crack at it next year n the 2009 Provincial election. STV seems like a somewhat complicated proposal at first read, but I am convinced that it is a much better system than the 'first past the post' system we have now.
The most appalling thing to happen so far in this year's race to the bottom, er, 'Canadian Federal Election' is encapsulated in this quote from the consortium of broadcasters:
