First, I see this as about uniting for a fair voting system as much as against the reckless government that is currently in power led by PM Harper.

Second, there is an ongoing line of thought that cooperation means reducing our democracy. I disagree. A perpetuation of the status quo is far worse – it will likely result in further vote splits ensuring that, once again, the 61% majority (or whatever it is next time) who vote for parties other than the CPC will continue to have absolutely no meaningful power in government. We need a serious plan to break out of the trap our democracy is currently in, and I don’t believe any amount of wishing for a Liberal or NDP majority government is going to get us there. Implementing a plan that leads to electoral reform and fair voting would be a huge, huge improvement to our democracy.

Finally, we don’t have a current break down of the Leadnow community by age – these numbers are old – but take a look:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=212264118789784

We never claimed the survey was representative of Canadians as a whole – it wasn’t supposed to be – but it is representative of our 80,000 person community distributed in every corner of the country, to give us an indication of what our community wants to take action on.

http://www.leadnow.ca/map-community

That’s 80k+ Canadians who care about a range of issues – from asbestos to coal power, inequality and justice issues. We know they care about issues because they’ve acted on them, but the majority of those Canadians who care (most of which are not at all young or urban) (a) are not party members, (b) want the parties to cooperate to address those issues they care about including electoral reform, and (c) would be willing to join a party to push for cooperation. If that isn’t a carrot the NDP, Liberals and Greens should be paying attention to I don’t know what is. Most Canadians really don’t care about parties – they want action on issues.

Thanks for the discussion, I appreciate it.

Matthew (Leadnow’s Campaigns Director)

I am not one that thinks uniformity on the left or right does anyone any good. I think Canadians were better served when there was a clear difference between the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives. Those on the right had a choice to vote for a pro-choice candidate (to use your example). Your own argument is that the left is best served by not having to compromise, and I agree, but we’re never going to get the chance to make that decision because either we all vote one way, or we all vote at a disadvantage.

What Cullen is talking about is working together once so we don’t have to lose our diverse voices in government. It’s not about a shortcut, but rather about acknowledging that people on the left are going to vote their hearts, wherever their hearts might lie, and making sure that expressing those leanings don’t confine us to the fringes forever.

Let’s face it, this field plays to the CPC. They’re not about to push for electoral reform when they would be giving up their main advantage. The other parties will. They want their voices heard, and will create policy that ensures they can continue to be a part of this democracy. But they can only do that if they have a majority of the seats.

What’s wrong with the modern right is not that they tenaciously fight for their beliefs and refuse to compromise on them. What’s wrong is, first, that their beliefs are false (and indeed largely a body of propaganda not really believed by those in control of the movement), and, second, that they so routinely stoop to such despicable methods in their pursuit of power–falsifying fact, indulging in dirty tricks, and routinely violating democratic norms and principles. It’s been my experience that those for whom the ends justify vile means typically turn out to have vile ends, as well.

And what’s wrong with the modern left is not refusal to compromise. Far from it–overwillingness to compromise is a major source of damage to the left. One sees that weakness in debate time and again–a right winger will make an outrageous attack, and the left will waste their time defending themselves from whatever charge rather than attacking back harder. All it does is concentrate people on the ridiculous charge, giving the impression that there might be something to it.

If Greens, Dippers and Liberals each had an amount of seats approximate to their support by Canadians we could each vote according to our partisan ideals in an atmosphere that would require cooperation.

Or maybe you would prefer we all voted strategically to pursue these ends? Just kidding!

I look forward to your defense of partisanship. Without political parties, how would we govern in a parliamentary democracy? It would be back to the days of assembling sufficient votes to pass a budget through bribes, threats, and riding-specific expenditures. Not the kind of “confidence” in the government that would inspire confidence in the public, I dare say.

First off, even though we clearly disagree, thanks for taking the time to respond in detail to my post. New Democrats have a variety of opinions of how to get there, but I think we have the same hopes and aspirations for the political direction of the country.

With regards to the iPolitics pieces, you can sign up for free for 2 weeks, which is how I accessed them. I found the entire series by Graves fascinating. Of course as a pollster he was WAY off in the last Federal election, and realized after that this was caused by a lot of younger people telling him that they were going to vote, but actually did not. So he is searching for a new way to investigate the mood and opinions of the electorate. The research is quite interesting.

With regards to voting FOR something through cooperation – here’s the response to a similar comment I left on praxistheatre.com:

“I was thinking about how the “FOR and not AGAINST something” close to this piece would necessarily have me talking to someone in the comments, because I understand how electoral cooperation meaning voting FOR something could seem counter-intuitive.

The something that the post-partisan activists I talk to are hoping to vote FOR, is a new spirit of cooperation and compromise that will allow the opposition parties to share power and promote the policies that are supported by the majority of Canadians.

It is different than how politics have operated in the past where you vote on adherence to a singular ideology, that devalues all others and is based on ‘war room’ ‘us vs them’ mentality.

Because I’m a NDPer, personally I’m pretty pissed off with the Liberal trend of campaigning from the left and governing from the right over the past decade. Nevertheless, Im not going to let my bitterness over this get in the way of us moving forwards.

What we could vote FOR is to rise above all this partisanship and do something truly historic.”

I am reticent to get to drawn into implementation speculation at this point. I bet there will be several proposals and counter proposals as this idea develops.

Regardless, there is a startling amount of evidence to suggest that a Big Tent progressive alternative to Harper that will give people something to believe in would be extraordinarily popular with Canadians if not with party officials.

Looking forward to your next post on partisanship.

Michael