Im not crazy about this whole “party list” concept. If parties got to choose who went on their lists, wouldn that end up turning into a patronage factory, giving us a bunch of lousy MPs?
It could happen that way, but it wouldn’t have to. A look at the world’s electoral systems provides us with a whole bunch of different ways of compiling party lists without backroom jockeying. An “open list” would allow voters to arrange the order of list candidates. A “zippered list” would require every other candidate to be a woman, and serve to make Parliament more gender-representative. A list could be assembled through primary elections, or be composed of those who ran in riding elections but lost by a tiny portion of the vote. It could be assembled at the regional or even the local level, perhaps by riding associations instead of by those at the top. With so many choices, surely we’d be able to find something that would be right for Canada.
