• MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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    9 days ago

    Yeah, just let the fascists win!

    PR is a gift to the fascists, e.g., Italy, Austria and Poland come screaming to mind with Germany and France being dangerously close to having far Right parties take power.

    • Sunshine (she/her)@piefed.caOP
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      9 days ago

      Yet you ignore that fascists win with minority of the vote in countries with first-past-the-post. Donald Trump, Ron Desantis…

      With proportional representation they have to win a majority. So it’s not meant to stop people for voting what they want but to more accurately represent the vote. Fascists love winning with just 30% instead of 51%.

      Iceland, Norway and Spain are successful countries under pr.

      Not mention countries with pr have the strongest unions.

      • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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        9 days ago

        ???

        Both of those examples won thr majority of votes. DeSantis won almost 60%, donald got over half…

        • Sunshine (she/her)@piefed.caOP
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          9 days ago

          You’re engaging in bad faith, Trump couldn’t crack past 50% of the vote and turnout was low at 64% so that was inaccurate.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election

          Sure Ron Desantis won 59% of the vote in the last race but the voter turnout was embarrassingly low at 53.6%. Typical for first-past-the-post forcing down only 2 viable candidates instead of multiple.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Florida_gubernatorial_election

          You’re opposing a fairer electoral system because you support the powerful few. You don’t want people to have more choices.

          • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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            9 days ago

            You can’t just decide that A) the folks who didn’t vote would actually vote for your side and B) that turnout would be significantly higher (Italy’s last election had about the same turnout, Austria had higher, both turned out governments of which you would not approve.)

            I’m opposing this system because it has turned out really bad results in the last decade and I care about the people those governments would hurt here.

            You might be okay regardless of government, I care about the people who wouldn’t be.

            • Sunshine (she/her)@piefed.caOP
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              9 days ago

              Italy’s last election had about the same turnout

              Italy has a parallel system not a proportional one.

              Austria had higher, both turned out governments of which you would not approve.

              It’s a coalition, I don’t want one party to have all the power in government, there’s less accountability in that.

              I’m opposing this system because it has turned out really bad results in the last decade and I care about the people those governments would hurt here.

              The system that represents 95% of the vote, gives people better healthcare, climate action, accountability and more choice in parties/independents will hurt “Canadians more” you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about.

              If people want to vote fascists, that’s a different problem from the electoral system ie propaganda.

              Robert Mugabe would smile at your words.

              • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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                9 days ago

                To be clear, your 2 points are “Italy only aloocates two thirds of its seats via PR so it doesn’t count!” and “Austrian politicians have contorted themselves to keep out Kickl!” Neither of which is a ringing endorsement of PR.

                Oh, and somewhat bizzarely deciding that Mugabe would be a fan even though he took power under a PR system! (80/20 split between PR and FPTP but he won a majority through PR anyway.)

                If people want to vote fascists, that’s a different problem from the electoral system ie propaganda.

                Or, the system you propose has generally not delivered satisfactory results which helps push people to extremes.

                The system that represents 95% of the vote, gives people better healthcare, climate action, accountability

                This isn’t a fact, it’s just some random nonsense you’ve declared. Hopefully you know there’s a difference.

                Basically, of the two of us, I actually read about the world and then think about it. You’ve decided that PR is the best because you want people to have more choices at the ballot (which is good) without considering what happens to countries that have tried this.

                  • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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                    8 days ago

                    That is my favourite kind of question! Unfortunately, social sciences are pretty hard to demonstrate causation. (Any research would involve so many subjective decisions, e.g., Turkey is nominally a PR country but I imagine İmamoğlu and others would uhhh, have strong disagreements with that. Do you count poorer countries with a complicated recent history? If we restrict too much the sample size becomes negligible etc.)

                    But, after having doorknocked and bugged friends to do so as well for proportional representation in 2015, I’ve watched what’s happened across the world since and it’s spooked the shit out of me. In part, what I’ve seen are the causal mechanisms, which I think are twofold:

                    1. FPTP disincentives fringe/extreme parties. Think back to the thankfully short lived PPC here. That’s not to say they can’t take hold, look at Reform UK or the Republicans. But, in both cases, it took the collapse or infiltration of an existing mainstream party, which thankfully, is pretty rare. As much as I dislike and disagree with Polievre, few reasonably informed Canadians would put him or the Conservatives in the same bucket as the far Right parties in Europe/America.

                    2. In recent, more polarized years, it’s been harder for parties to compromise to pass significant legislation, which has resulted in surprising stagnation and papering over problems. As a joky but illustrative example, in Germany, the trains no longer run on time! (Seriously, if you’ve been to Germany 20 years ago, you’ll know what a bizarre thing that is to say. It’d be like basketball replacing hockey here.) But that inability to pass bold, significant legislation means problems don’t get addressed and people don’t see much significant change in their lives.

                    Our system has a lot of faults. But in my eyes, the biggest strength is that a government with a majority can really do things as there are fewer checks and balances. Think back to how effective and targeted CERB was, proportionally, we spent a fraction of what the US did but it helped people who really needed it and quite well. Despite being interrupted by a pandemic and then fighting off challenges to his leadership, Trudeau still started us on a path to subsidized childcare (absolute game changer if we can get that over the finish line) dental and pharmacare. BUT, for all that strength, it also means we are much more susceptible to disastrous outcomes with a bad government.

                • Sunshine (she/her)@piefed.caOP
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                  8 days ago

                  To be clear, your 2 points are “Italy only aloocates two thirds of its seats via PR so it doesn’t count!”

                  It’s either fully proportional or its not.

                  Basically, of the two of us, I actually read about the world and then think about it.

                  The “I know more than you” sounds like lazy reasoning at best and arrogant at worst, it goes hand and hand with your ban from !fairvote@lemmy.ca for your dismissive and disrespectful conduct.

                  You’ve decided that PR is the best because you want people to have more choices at the ballot (which is good) without considering what happens to countries that have tried this.

                  That’s certainly strawmanning my position as it’s not the only reason why I support proportional representation. I want more accountability, 95% of the vote represented, real progress on issues, friendly compromise and collaboration in our politics.

                  You’re undemocratic wanting to prevent proper representation the people. You support false majorities claiming they “keep extremists out” when history shows otherwise as extremists have been shown to hijack the big parties. Giving one party all the power with only 39% is morally wrong and reckless. Also the evidence shows that governments are actually more stable under pr.

                  • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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                    7 days ago

                    It’s either fully proportional or its not.

                    What, why? All but 20% are proportional, the same coalition and minority governments exist etc. I get you don’t like the outcome but declaring it doesn’t count despite functionally being PR is a weird position.

                    it goes hand and hand with your ban from !fairvote@lemmy.ca for your dismissive and disrespectful conduct.

                    Ahhhh, lol. I politely tried to excuse myself but someone from there just wanted to come with increasingly silly and somewhat hysterical “points.” I don’t think the onus is on me to pretend everything being said is reasonable. (If memory serves, someone had read so little about the topic that they called me racist for noting that the Nordic states are homogenous countries, as opposed to say, Canada with the Quebecois/Anglo divide, or Iraq with the Shia, Sunni and Kurd groups.) Although, dang, I wish I could see that thread because some of the stuff OP ended up trying to say was legitimately hysterical. Though I guess I appreciate the ban happened after I said that I said the discussion had reached an impass, that’s at least respectful.

                    disrespectful conduct.

                    To be clear, accusing me of being on the side of a mass murderer like Mugabe is fine and respectful but saying you don’t seem to read about the real world isn’t? That’s certainly… A choice.

                    That’s certainly strawmanning my position

                    Your “position” is just statements, repeating the same unproven desires that PR leads to “real progress on issues, friendly compromise and collaboration” when time and time again, that’s shown not to be the case which is the fundamental problem with PR. I’ve used multiple examples that show this has not been the case. All you’ve done is say examples don’t count for specious reasons (somehow, only 80% PR means fundamentally different mechanics and a coalition government, the typical outcome of PR means the Kickl isn’t a problem) and then repeat the same hopes for PR. Waving away all the real world examples that you dislike without any particularly good reasons is not a way to demonstrate that you are correct.

                    What are the differences between statements and points? Consider someone who said capitalism was the best because it delivered the highest living standards and the most freedom for people. And then you went and pointed out those aren’t entirely true using facts, examples etc and their response was “no, those countries have welfare so they aren’t real capitalism” and then just kept repeating that capitalism delivered the highest living standards and the most freedom for people. In this case too, those are just unproved statements that someone wants to be true without evidence being given.

          • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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            8 days ago

            Yes, but (admittedly, I was off by .3%) he still won more votes than his opponent.

            In fact, a PR system may have enabled him further as presumably not all of RFK’s voters followed to trump BUT in a PR system that wouldn’t matter. As long as they voted for RFK and he teamed up with trump A) their wishes wouldn’t matter and B) he could hold trump hostage for even crazier anti vax stuff.

      • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        Yup, but I think PR fosters the emergence of Far Right/fascist parties.

        I sort of explained the mechanisms to someone else in this thread here:

        https://lemmy.ca/comment/18847795

        tl;dr: FPTP discourages fringe parties, so they can’t snowball into something much more dangerous. And PR systems have, in the last couple of decades, had a much harder time passing significant legislation which has led to a general stagnation/dissatisfaction, whereas a system that produces strong majority governments for better or worse, gets a legit chance to pass comprehensive legislation to tackle issues. Carney has 4ish years to try his best to make serious change without having to beg the Conservatives for everything.

    • leastaction@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      On the contrary, FPTP is a gift to extremist minorities. That should be abundantly clear right now.