Ontario’s next provincial election and an important referendum are happening tomorrow, Wednesday Oct 10. I’m writing this to encourage you to get out and vote, especially on the referendum.

To summarize the new system (MMP) compared to the existing system I would say the following:

The old system forces you to compromise between the quality of your local candidate and the party who you believe will do the best job for the province, because you can only have one vote.  Votes cast for the second best and third best riding candidates are not tallied in the electoral results for provincial leadership. 

The newly proposed MMP allows you to separate those judgements by voting for a candidate and then also voting for the party  you believe in.  Often people interested in representation from smaller parties do not actually vote for them because they have a preference between the two frontrunning political parties and therefore vote to block the party they like least.  Due to this process small parties (such as the green party) have less representation.  The second ballot for political party will reflect the true proportions of peoples’ political party preferences.

MMP needs a 60% majority to pass, so high voter turnout is particularly important. BC recently had a referendum on the same topic and fell just short with 58% approval.

Here are a few links that you can also refer to: wikipedia, the official referendum site and hitched.ca.