Voting day in Ontario

It may surprise some of you to find that today is an election day in Ontario . . . and the most likely result is no change (the ruling Liberal party may lose a few seats, but appears likely to still manage a majority in the house). John Tory did a masterful job of steadily wearing down his own support to keep Premier McGuinty in power for another four years (the government-funded madrassa proposal had a major part in this outcome).

Perhaps more important is the referendum to change the existing electoral system from the traditional first-past-the-post to a system that will provide (theoretically) a result more reflective of the actual votes cast. I like to consider this proposal the "Never let Mike Harris get elected again" initiative, because the most likely outcome of implementing this will be a never-ending series of coalition governments between the moderate left, the hard left, and the Greens. We'll not likely see the conservatives get close to running the province again if this proposal is approved by the voters.

I'm against it, by the way, as I really don't like the idea of adding a number of unelected (and probably otherwise-unelectable) party bagmen through the party list system: the current system isn't wonderful, but it's better than this monstrosity being foisted off on the voters today.