Felicia: what dave, wane and wilf said
Mark Hammer: Israel is a really bad example because they have no ridings. Everyone in Israel lives in a single riding and all votes are proportional with no minimum cutoff. Canada would never implement that, local representation is an essential part of our system that no one is proposing to remove. Using a partially proportional system like MMP or STV in combination with a minimum support cutoff of around 5% would remove the risk of very small parties dominating parliament.

You ask what it would be like to have a party with 25% of the vote ruling, well the current Conservatives only have what 30% support, maybe 40% at election time? No one gets 50% anymore. A coalition of smaller parties could though, and under a proportional system coalitions would be easier to justify and would make sense so we'd get better representation.

Of course voting reform is only one part of fixing what is wrong with our democracy, its the single most important part but there are many others.

If you have an opinion on any kind of democratic reform we need to think about make your voice heard here: http://ow.ly/2CaCn

That is exactly what they are hoping will happen. People are too tired to care about democracy. But I do agree, it is depressing that it seems there is no one out there with the willingness to change the system. All three viable federal parties make little effort to bring about real reform.

Maybe we need a new party or some other dramatic change led by people like Andrew Coyne and Rick Mercer to really shake things up. They're the only ones out there talking sense.

exactly, in the amount of time spent thinking about whether you should have joined the facebook group you can have joined it. If you are slightly more serious, join the large Facebook Event for the coorindated protests on Jan 23. If you are really serious, actually show up to that protest, or help organize it.

Andrew, I agree with you that Ignatieff needs to distinguish himself by taking a stand. And the deficit is a noble goal, I think everyone assumes, given the Paul Martin years, that this would be a major goal for them. But frankly, its not very exciting or inspiring. Whether that is rational or not isn't the point, the very point you are making is that the Liberals need to excite the public with a stand on some issues, so the issue needs to be exciting. Personally, I think there is space for a national leader to excite the Canadian public with a grand vision of how to fix our dysfunctional democracy. I know you are on board about the importance of electoral reform but most Canadians don't think about it. They just know that something is wrong, that they're votes don't count, and that they can't see any way out of the minority/conservative Catch-22 we've got ourselves stuck in. There is space for a national leader to explain this, with passion, and to give Canadians a dream that we could actually get the representation we ask fro Ottawa. They need to go beyond their interests and argue for something that benefits Canadian voters but not necessarily any of the parties. That's the kind of authenticity people can believe in, and I agree with you completely in that Canadians deeply want to believe in something again, its been so long. I think its proportional representation (of some kind), maybe its the green technology, or world peace but its definitely not the deficit.

If you aggree with me, sign this petition act.ly/nk