"It's an extreme case" – ergo, a more nuanced case is needed, ergo, a different type of post than Wherry provides.

Well, if they want Saskatchewan seats in the next election they are going to have to do something. Good luck getting the conservative majority to redraw the riding maps before the next election when it so obviously favours them.

Also, oil field workers are moving into Saskatoon in droves since direct flights to Fort McMurray and other places started and we'll know how they'll vote, so… tick tock.

What voting machines? Where did we have voting machines? I watched a poll count, and it was all done with hands and a pen and a big enough space on a table (and two people). I have absolute confidence that the official count at my poll was bang on–not a doubt in my mind, not a single 'iffy' ballot.

Probably that the rural ridings would be too large to get the necessary population for a riding.

What needs to be mutually exclusive is arguing:
-that it's perfectly fine for the party with the most votes to be shut out of government
-that it's not perfectly fine for the parties without the most votes to be shut out of parliament

So it's fair for the winner of the election to be shut out completely, but it's not fair for the loser of the election to be shut out completely.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Exactly. It seems the Federal Government is now involved in everything from garbage collection to national defence. I think a lot of people in this country should be enrolled in a remedial civics class – provincially-administered of course : )

I agree, STV as proposed in B.C. was terribly complicated. One of the things that turned me off most was the sheer size of the proposed constituencies under STV, each of which would be represented by 3 or 4 MLAs. How do you hold 3 or 4 different MLAs accountable for one vast constituency? Very challenging. I was told at the time that MMP would have been a better choice, but was not put forward as an option.

And FPP, though much maligned, does have certain points in its favour, like the ability to form clear majority governments with strong mandates. Admittedly this an unappealing feature when it's your team that's down, but still not something I'd throw out lightly. I'm still open to the idea of proportional representation, but it would depend strongly on the proposed system.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow what our friends across the pond have to say on the issue.

if by needlessly complicated you mean most fair, sad. Otherwise, it's kind of like ordering dinner.

You'd like the Pasta. Sorry, we're all out. Pizza? sorry that specials all gone too. Burger? Great.

That's STV. If your first choice is gone, there's something else on the menu, you just have to know your rank before the waiter comes over.

Thwin …. as to your comment respecting the system – So what!

Please explain on what legal constitutional basis you could change the current "system" without a Constitutional Amendment.

As a matter of fact, I am complicating challenging the right of Elections Canada to mention political parties on any document or webpage they produce …. I might lose the application pursuant to Section 1 if I proceeded by means of an application citing the Charter – but, there is no practical need to involve the Charter at all.

Fair? – it is what it is and not educated wishing is just so much hot air only. Not the best system …. I take it you lost locally in enough places so you are only a disgruntled and somewhat unhappy person …. as I said before, suck it up or lobby to change the Constitution in a way you may believe is more fair.

You owe me at least a couple of dollars because I said and did exactly that when I won a concession from the Province of Alberta in court forcing them to provide Alberta Health Care Insurance cards for those with no fixed address.

As I said …. either suck up your loss or lobby to change the Constitution into any way you believe it would be more fair.

To be fair, this issue is hardly an overarching one for me. I worry much more about voter identification laws which have disfranchised hundreds of thousands of Canadians right across the country …. last election, the Green Party claimed that was some 3-1/2 million but I do not go that far …. this election, to the best of my knowledge no one has raised the issue publicly (or at least – no one has published any stories on that issue kinda like no one raised any substantive issues respecting Canadian sovereignty losses to proposals for a North American Union (see – http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2005/01/05OTTAWA268.htm… —– and other sources) or why we are running the show in the assassination attempts in Libya on Gadaffi (our very own Lt Gen Charles Bouchard, deputy commander of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, has been designated head of the alliance's military campaign in Libya) or why we don't just pack up and leave Afghanistan when there is little point in staying there or the implications of CETA – Canadian European Trade Accord (see – http://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/updates… ) or new laws allowing our fresh water to become a commodity … and on and on.

Now, not one of those issues became an election issue did it, nor have they become a post election issue yet have they …. people want to argue this type of low consequential bullscat.

You just had your circus, did you get your bread Halo_Override?

The majority of Canadians live in cities.

Conservatives in those cities — just like left-leaning rural voters — currently have a largely-unmet expectation that their vote is worth something more than two dollars. (And soon we'll probably be able to eliminate those last four words as well.)

A PR system, carefully crafted and properly applied, could not only help address the back-and-forth power imbalance of FPTP, but in doing so could maybe also give urban and rural voters one less reason to always be perpetually angry at each other.

We live in a democracy. Dirt and oil don't get votes… people do.

As I said, the Law Commission's recommendation has never been rejected. Both of those recommendations were on a closed-province-wide list model. For example, the NDP's strongest region in Ontario is Northern Ontario, yet Northern Ontario rejected the Citizens' Assembly's model more strongly than any other region of Ontario — because it failed to provide that Northern votes would elect northern MPPs, while reducing the number of local MPPs from the North. Only Toronto voters were favourable to a model with province-wide lists, precisely as one would expect.

In your mother's basement of course. Anyone who challenges the omniscient and erudite Emily is clearly an unemployed basement-dwelling shut-in who hasn't traveled more than two blocks from home in his entire life.