I vote for Henry Sturman.

I think his points about the pros and cons of PR are well taken. While small parties may be free to publish their opinions, they are not free to vote on laws. There is no good reason for this. It means that people who support them are not represented in the legislature at all.

It seems to me that people who oppose PR really prefer elitist rule over honoring the people's choices (while paying lip service to democracy). If having members of more parties voting will make it harder to pass new laws, then I say "great". Most new laws suck. If there's an important new law that's worth passing, it should be possible to convince a majority to vote for it.

There's no reason we couldn't have PR in the legislature and a Condorcet-style election for a single chief executive who is not required to form a coalition. The idea of marching 62% of the way to Baghdad is really a silly argument. If the chief executive places his political ambition above principle, then he's unlikely to do the right thing no matter what system is in place.

And I don't think democracy is or isn't dictatorship. Democracy is about how to choose leaders, and dictatorship is about how much power leaders wield. You can have democratically elected dictators, and you can have leaders limited by a constitution chosen by other methods.

Gil