First Past the Post

Over the last few years, I have been blogging. Over the last few years, there have been a few movements to bring some form of Proportional Representation into the Canadian Westminister system. To date, the two have never mixed (except once briefly), and this is a very short post to rectify that issue.

First off, I am opposed to proportional representation. They tend to take a small flaw of first-past-the-post (popular vote and seat count being variant), and sort of but not completely correct it. At the same time, they create a myriad of problems. I'm agin' it.

Who's in favour of it? Alberta Get Rich. Idealistic Pragmatist (with bonus commentary by me). Big City Lib.

Of course, results like this end up coming in, and suddenly we see both an odd coincidence and a flaw that like Al in Quantum Leap apparently only some of us can see and hear.

The British National Party won its first ever county council seat in the UK today.

The [...] party won its first seat in Lancashire in the party's stronghold of Burnley as Labour was routed.

Hours later a second followed in Coalville, Leicestershire.

Sharon Wilkinson was elected to Lancashire County Council with a massive 30 per cent of the vote as electors dumped Labour in their droves.

Her victory in the Padiham and Burnley West ward, where she was born and brought up, is a major victory for the party.

Specifically, isn't it odd that the people who support P.R. are the same ones who already have prominant extreme-left parties (NDP, Greens) that are basically capped in support, while those who oppose it are the ones with media marginalized parties that would greatly expand support and receive well deserved popular support?

Of course, most support for P.R. tends to come from the far leftists who have weird pipe dreams about their abilities and achievements. But in reality P.R. gives disproportionate influence by narrowly-appealing fringe parties. And in the far-left culture that we are presently gripped in, don't be surprised if the political schemers who benefit from MMV or STV or whatever acronym hell is invented^† are not the ones that the BigCityLibs of the world would be happy handing the reigns of power over to.

^† Another flaw in all these proportional representation proposals is to create some semblance of sanity and prevent insanely unworkable parliamentary bodies, the rules get so mind-blowingly confusing that even resident geniuses such as myself get soft in the brain trying to work through all the permutations and quirks and systems in place. First past the post is easy. Remember those 5 names on the ballot? Whoever gets the biggest number next to their names at the end of the night is in and everybody else is out.