PR - everyone can win

Tom Neave really let it all out in his July 26 letter “Politics isn’t about fairness.” 

And, you know, I agree with that statement. Our politics has never been about fairness. 

But as I read further, where he talks of elections, I realize he meant democracy because politics simply refers to the way any group is organized and has nothing to do with fairness.

Every group has a different polity, and ours, in effect, has been, for many years, a corporatocracy, the structure of which produces winners and losers, somewhat like a hockey game. So I’m going to use the word “democracy” instead of “politics” because that word means “government by the people” (not the politicians), a description that includes all the people in an election.

Those two events, a hockey game and an election, shouldn’t appeal to the human spirit in the same way. Hockey is to satisfy the human need to feel dominant, while an election in a representative democracy should satisfy the human need to feel needed and included.

Hockey only allows one of two teams to win, while the vast majority remain onlookers, much like our present system, first-past-the-post system.

Representative democracy should allow every voter to win, including multiple teams and with no onlookers left stranded in the bleachers, much like proportional representation.

Neave is correct when he says elections represent a socialist attitude – they are entirely about society, by and for the people. The politicians are just the hired help.
 
Life offers us many occasions to learn how to lose. An election isn’t one of them. An election in a representative democracy should be entirely about winning.
 
And that is what proportional representation offers. 

Ian MacKenzie, Kamloops