The Ontario Citizen’s Assembly

Who: A group of randomly selected volunteers picked from Ontario’s electoral lists

Why: Mandated by the McGuinty government to investigate if Ontario needed a revision in its electoral system, and if so, what these revisions should be.

Mixed Member Proportional

What: An electoral system designed to balance local concerns with the popular vote.

Where: Currently used in Germany, Scotland and New Zealand. Coming to Ontario in 2007?

First-Past-the-Post

What: The current electoral system, where each seat in parliament corresponds to a regional riding. The candidate who wins the largest share of the vote in each riding wins the seat.

If the referendum is passed, provincial parliament will expand from 107 to 129 seats, but Ontario will lose 17 of its 107 local ridings. In the process, riding boundaries will be redrawn. The other 39 seats will go to “List” MPPs: Each party will produce a public list of nominees, in a ranked order. While dual candidacy is allowed, (a candidate can run both as local and list), local seats take priority: if the candidate wins the local seat they were campaigning for, then they are ineligible to sit as a list member.

The elections would become more party-centered than candidate-centered since Ontarians would be voting for a party as far as list members were concerned. But, said Baquero these list members tend to be more racially and politically diverse, and are accountable to all Ontarians, not just a particular constituency.

Proponents of MMP say it increases public representation in parliament, because a constituent can discuss issues both with their geographical representative and the list member who deals with the policy in question.

In case a candidate loses a close race in his riding, but is elected as a list member, he could act as shadow MPP, serving as an alternate representative of his riding, Baquero explained.

While it is too early to comment on how the proposed reform would affect voter turnout, its backers stress that, because every vote counts toward a party’s proportion representation, it will positively influence voter turnout.