These  pics are of the Leaders of the Opposition Parties in the Ontario Legislature Marit Stiles of the NDP and Bonnie Crombie of the Ontario Liberal Party.

These people are unrecognisable to any of the population except to fellow MPPs, political pundits and nerds and geeks with a political bent. Neither are household names or instantly known to the voters. Contrast this with this guy – everybody knows him!

This is the problem that both Oppo Parties have – nobody knows anything about them except the names and perceptions of what the Party is.

We bring this post today to highlight the problem as we see it in the next Provincial Election, soon to be held after we all receive our “bribe” of a two- hundred dollar cheque signed by Doug Ford. This problem is that very few people – voters, will know anybody in the running except the guy that people know – Doug Ford. In these situations the voters, even though those who hold their noses whilst voting will go for the familiar. Hence the re-election of the known.

Another problem of our Provincial voting system is the fact that there are two Opposition Parties – the NDP and the OLP. This problem usually results, because of the failure to implement Preferential Voting, in a winning Party being elected with a minority of the popular vote.

Vote-splitting is going to be, once again, the key to the PCs re-election. This has to be stopped. Two solutions are available to this problem and either will present a real alternative to the PCs:

1. 1. Merge the Opposition Parties – This is a non-starter due to the ideology of Party Elites and Partisans – the Libs and NDP do not like any part of the other Party.
   2. For this election strike a “cooperation agreement”. The French have just done it in their recent election. Both Centre-Left/Centre Parties agreed to run the candidate with the best chance of winning, irrespective of Party membership in each Electoral District. – it worked!

Let’s be real folks Doug Ford is going to be reelected with less than a third of the voters voting for him and his gang of sycophants and ‘clapping seals’. We need a different approach. 

The Democratic Party in the USA has just lost an election that was supposed to be a given – why? Because they have been relying on outmoded electoral tactics – appealing to the wrong set of voters, leaving their base behind to chase Unicorns and white women. IT DID NOT WORK! 

I know that I will offend some of my political friends but tough, we have to do it differently and I cannot say it enough so “We have to do it differently”, “We have to do it differently”.

Just my two cents worth.