Roundup: Impossible to extrapolate

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As with so many elections these days, it brings out the electoral reform fetishists, and they get self-righteous and say dumb things all over social media, and this week’s general election in the UK is no different. And lo, those fetishists are again making pronouncements about things like “voters’ wishes” because they’re trying to find a grand narrative that confirms their priors, and I fear I may lose my gods damned mind over this.

Once again, let us remember what this election is—650 separate and simultaneous elections, each one for a specific seat. So yes, the voters’ wishes are reflected because they chose who filled each seat. As well, I will once again remind you that the so-called “popular vote” is a logical fallacy because there is too much variation between each electoral contest to make any kind of grand aggregate that is meaningful—particularly in the UK, where the smaller countries have regional parties that England doesn’t, and yes, that does distort the “national picture” (as what happens in Canada with the Bloc). And no, every vote that is cast does not deserve their own seat. That’s not democracy, and it’s actually sore loserism if you believe that your vote doesn’t count if the person or party you prefer doesn’t win.

This is the other aspect of these fetishists spouting off and producing their own graphs of how they claim that Parliament “should” look if they had a PR system, erm, except they seem to always insist that it would be pure-PR (which is almost entirely unlikely), and it discounts that voting behaviour would change, but so would party formation under a system that no longer rewards big-tent brokerage in favour of post-election negotiation for coalitions. In no possible way can you extrapolate a vote like Thursday’s and come up with what a Parliament “should” look like, but that won’t stop the fetishists from trying.

Oh, and if one of these fetishists also tries to bring up lines about how the current single-member plurality system is “bad for democracy,” I’m not sure that PR is having a great run right now, as it legitimizes far-right and extremist parties that is almost impossible under SMP, and that legitimacy afforded to them is allowing them to grow across Europe. The situation in the Netherlands is also cause for concern, given that the far-right parties there have taken months to try to cobble together some sort of working coalition and may prove completely unworkable or ungovernable, and that’s not good for anyone.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russian advance toward Toretsk in the Donetsk region means that time is running out for any Ukrainian citizens that want to flee. While Ukraine managed to destroy all 32 Russian drones launched Friday night, early Saturday morning was another story—drones hit an energy facility in Sumy, and hits on Selydove and Komar killed eight combined. Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s navy says that Russia has  nearly re-based all of its combat-read warships from occupied Crimea, because of the number of successful Ukrainian strikes on the region.

Good reads:

  • There are more questions raised about what the government knew about the new CHRC chair’s social media, or whether he actually tweeted anything objectionable.
  • There are hopes that with a new UK government, that trade talks can resume in order to finalise a proper post-Brexit free-trade agreement.
  • The report on the 2022 Rogers outage has been turned into the CRTC, and finds human error to be the initial cause of said outage, which got compounded.
  • Anthony Housefather has now formally been appointed to a special advisor role on combatting antisemitism, four months after having been promised it.
  • Pierre Poilievre has been campaigning at evangelical churches, and the story omits that he visited three during the Toronto Pride parade (which was a choice).
  • In his upcoming book, Marc Garneau criticises the government’s approach to foreign affairs as being mostly about pronouncements with little follow-through. (Fair!)
  • Negotiations around Legal Aid Alberta have resumed, so they will continue to provide services in the interim.
  • Anne Applebaum explains how Kier Starmer defeated populism on both the left and the right of his Labour party.
  • Shannon Proudfoot notes the similarity in both Trudeau and Biden having a record of being underestimated, but why that may be making both delusional at present.
  • My weekend column makes the case that Mark Carney won’t save the Liberal Party, and that they need to give up this fantasy and turn to constructive solutions.

Odds and ends:

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