Here are a couple of excellent articles by Tom Flanagan who presents a persuasive case for why those of us who may wish our government would be a little more ambitious should be patient. This one is called the 10 commandments of conservative campaigning and the more recent one is on incremental conservatism.

I like this article and the blog generally. I don’t agree with it all but it is interesting.

Until we finally dump this ridiculous and undemocratic first past the post electoral system, polls, representing party popularity, are really not indicative of election outcomes. It is usually left to us to guess how each party’s popularity will translate into seats in Parliament. Guessing is inherently inaccurate and especially when partisan bias is inevitably a factor.

So, what I do is take the poll numbers, broken down by province and/or region, and plug them into a spread sheet which converts them into numbers representing shifts in support from the support each party received in the last election. Then I plug those numbers into the UBC Election Forecaster. The result, I believe, is a fairly accurate seat projection based on the poll results used. Obviously it is no more accurate than the poll is, but it eliminates one’s bias in interpreting the results.

So the latest poll I used was Decima’s from Sep. 15. Nationally it has the Conservatives in front with 32%, the Liberals next at 29% followed by the NDP at 17%, the Greens at 14%, and the Bloc at 5% (sharply down to 22% in Quebec).

Translated to seats this gives us:

CPC = 132
Lib = 123
Bloc = 32
NDP = 23
Independent = 1
Green = 0

Two comments: one, it is just plain wrong that 15% of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised by our system. Since Green support is distributed widely (in other words, is not just a regional phenomena) they will need much higher numbers before they can elect even a single MP.

Two, the exception to the above may be Central Nova, which is not amendable to the UBC system since the Liberals are not running a candidate there thanks to Dion’s deal with May. The only way to use my system for this (my own) riding is to make a guess as to how those who would otherwise have voted Liberal will vote. My guess is that 10% of the Liberal vote stays home. It may be higher but I think those Liberally inclined are more likely to buy into the notion that civic duty obliges them to cast a ballot even when they are not enamoured with any of the options. I see a further 10% going Conservative but the bulk split between the NDP and Greens (35% and 45% respectively).

The result is an NDP win with the Greens a close second (35% to 30% to 25% for the incumbent Conservatives). The Greens are close enough that they could pull it out - who knows, especially with so much of this atypical riding’s numbers based on guess work. However, this poll was particularly poor for the Conservatives (18% in Atlantic Canada) and from past elections we know that party does considerably better during election campaigns than in between campaigns. Though no cake-walk, I still believe this seat will be Conservative when the dust settles. Or is that my bias showing up after all.

Here’s my prediction for how the NBA Eastern Conference fairs in 07-08:

1. Chicago
2. New Jersey
3. Toronto
4. Detroit
5. Boston
6. Washington
7. Cleveland
8. New York
9. Milwaukee
10. Orlando
11. Miami
12. Philadelphia
13. Charlotte
14. Atlanta
15. Indiana

Never mind which party wins the coming Ontario provincial election. That’s just the side show. The main event is the referendum which will be held concurrently on whether to adopt a mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system . A citizen’s assembly, an appointed body of randomly chosen people, as rejected the present first past the post system by an overwhelming 92%.

Under MMP you vote for your member, like now, but you also vote for your party. Let’s say there are 10 seats up for grabs (as there are in Nova Scotia federally). Five of these seats might be determined in the traditional way and 5 according to percentage of the vote each party receives. So let’s say the Badger Party gets 40% of the vote, the Raccoon Party gets 40% and the Beaver Party gets 20%. Now let’s assume that 3 Badger’s get elected in their respective ridings and 2 Raccoons get elected. Fine, now it’s time to allot the party seats. In order to bring the results into consistency with the percentage of the vote each party received 2 party seats would go to the Beavers, 2 to the Raccoons and 1 to the Badgers. The result is that each riding gets the representative they voted for AND each party gets the same percentage of total elected members as the percent of the vote they received.

No more majority governments formed by a party getting 35% of the vote. No more million Canadians voting Green and getting zero representation out of it. No more millions of urban voters voting CPC without electing an MP. No more millions of Liberal votes in the West without corresponding representation.

CFor lots and lots more reasons to vote for the MMP system and adopt a fair voting system in Ontario go to www.voteformmp.ca.

For more info on promoting MMP across the country visit www.fairvotecanada.org

Often you hear it said that to stand in awe of nature is to realize the comparative insignificance of man. There are many references to this in popular culture. I have always held the opposite view suggested by Einstein when he quipped: “The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended.” But a better quote is this one by English mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey:

“Where I seem to differ from some of my friends is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone. My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model drawn to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings, and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits.”

Another quote which I like for its accurate portrayal of our relationship and significance to nature is this one (I can’t track down the authorship): “We are the universe’s way of comprehending itself.”

Pretty significant if you ask me.