An NDP-Liberal alliance isn’t the answer

Re It’s time to develop a winning strategy, Jan. 28 Let’s put to rest once and for all the notion, as expressed in the letter by Russell Pangborn that the Liberals and the NDP should just ignore their petty little differences and team up to slaughter the dreaded Conservatives at the polls. Just ask all of us lifelong NDP-ers who voted for Trudeau’s Liberals in 2015 because he ran to the left of Thomas Mulcair whether we’re happy with our choice now. Uh, no, we’re not. Once a centre-rightist, always a centre-rightist. No matter how much they try to cosy up to progressives during an election cycle, they’re never truly progressive. Never again, needless to say. There’s also the matter of attitude: Pangborn displays the typical attitude of Liberal supporters when he suggests that the two parties should unite under the Liberal banner in Ontario. That is to say, classic Liberal arrogance. Let’s see, now, Liberals, 7 seats, NDP, 40 seats and Official Opposition status. Let’s all you Dippers come join the Liberals! Right.

By the way, would everyone please stop using the term “decimate” incorrectly? If Wynne’s Liberals had been truly “decimated” (reduced by a tenth) in the last election, she’d have 52 seats now, rather than 7. She could only wish! David Remski, Toronto Letter writer Russell Pangborn comes to the wrong solution for our “phoney majority governments.” As the American experience shows, reducing politics to two parties can lead to truly awful governments. Moreover, a recent article in Scientific American (Geometry versus Gerrymandering by Moon Duchin, November 2018) finds it necessary to group electoral districts together to see if the seat count produced matches the overall vote count.

You cannot determine whether a districting arrangement favours one party over the other by shape, but only by outcome.

In an extreme case, a party with a little over 25 per cent of the vote could win a slim majority of the seats with only two parties and rectangular districts.

Even if every winning candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes in their district, margins and differences in riding populations can still produce “majority governments” with a minority of the votes.

Even if giving voters a real choice, rather than asking them to pick from a menu of two, was not important, if you want governments to reflect the way people voted, you need proportional representation. Gary Dale, Toronto