Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Tying Nominations to Fund Raising

I've been trying to decide whether to write about Michael Ignatieff's new plan to encourage MPs to get new members and donors by giving them a bye on nominations if they meet a certain quota.

No question, I like Ignatieff's innovation and I like the principle... except it sort of backfires if you don't want your MP to run again. In my riding, Kitchener-Waterloo, our MP was recently defeated, but if he hadn't been defeated I would feel the need to avoid giving any money and would need to make sure I didn't encourage any other people in my riding to join the party. (As it is, I don't know if we're going to have a nomination vote even though he lost.) I don't like to be mean, but it sometimes happens that successful people stay longer than they should.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You'll get no argument from me about Telegdi staying there too long. Now maybe they can get a fresh face to run next time.

Quixotique said...

nominations should be primarily tied to the wishes of the membership...now promoting a helathy membership is not such a bad things, but any form of incumbency protection is really pretty undemocratic.

Yappa said...

Hi Quixotique

(Great name, by the way.)

Is it undemocratic to let incumbents run by default? It could affect their ability to win if they have to fight nomination battles just before an election, especially in our system where elections can be unexpected. I thought the Ignatieff solution was a good compromise - there has to be an indication that they've been active and effective in their riding for them to avoid a nomination fight.

I've got to admit though that I don't have enough experience to know what works best. Do other parties in Canada and elsewhere protect incumbents?