‘No’ means ‘yes’

That’s Andrew Coyne’s reading of the meaning of the 63/37 rejection of PR/MMP in the Ontario referendum. This is typical of the PR fanatics - keep pressing for change till it happens then we’re stuck with it.

Iain Hunter has an excellent take on the PR pushers:

Who are these people, anyway?

Mostly, they're losers. Some of them are former politicians who wish they'd gone farther than they did. Some couldn't get elected dogcatcher. A lot of them are supporters of parties that have little chance of forming either the government or official opposition.

Many more are on the political fringe, among the raving loonies and raging grannies, fanatic cyclists and yogic flyers who have their special, sometimes weird, priorities that they feel everyone should share.

There are women who believe the electoral system must be changed if their sex is to gain the political influence it deserves, and aboriginals who see that system, and what it has produced, as a cause of so much of their historical hurt and present grievances.

And academics, who love tinkering with things, encourage citizens' committees to come up with proposals for a new model that will make each voter think that he or she counts more than he or she does now.

... And pundits like Coyne. And they’ll be back. Like Quebec separatists, they don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.