Relative to other elections, people are fairly informed about the General election and the issues at play. Outside the group of politics crazed students at UW it has become quite clear that few people know that we have a much more important decision to be made, that of the referendum on electoral reform.

For the first referendum in Ontario since 1924 (to repeal prohibition!) you’d think that there would be a lot more people discussing the issue. It’s likely a change in the electoral system would last much longer than the next government and if changed will cause a major shift in the composition of MPPs in the future. Unfortunately almost half of Ontarians say they don’t know about the proposed change.

The government has set up a website to try to present both sides and have mailed out information and have been advertising, but the message is not getting across. Questions such as how much additional will the new system cost are not answered while the entire issue is being overshadowed by the General Election. My personal thought is that regardless of the cost (and the savings due to holding the referendum with the election), it should have been held separately. A majority of the resources for the politically active are being focused towards the election while the referendum supporters and opponents are few and their messages aren’t being broadcast.

I encourage everyone to investigate both sides of the debate and encourage discussion in this last week leading up to the vote. Some recent Globe articles on the topic are here, here, and here.

What do you think?