Comment 80717

By ThisIsOurHamilton (registered) - website | Posted September 07, 2012 at 12:19:50 in reply to Comment 80671

Why don't we have mandatory term limits?

Mostly because this is a provincially-controlled issue. Which means that you'd have to get a massive groundswell across the province to get MPPs to do something that quite frankly, few are interested in doing: placing limits on political service. This isn't going to happen.

Besides; we have 'term limits'; they're called elections.

The problem is that over the past twenty-five years, the return rate on incumbents has been about 90%. http://thisisourhamilton.ca/?p=1493 So in the end, if you want to kvetch about who's continually being voted back in, talk to those who do so of the 40% who vote...the sixty percent of these who do so according to 'name recognition'...or the sixty percent who simply don't vote.

Here's the reality, given that the trend for re-election is on the rise: almost all councillors who run in 2014 will be returned. (Maybe one won't.) It is possible to sweep out a council, or a huge chunk of one; Guelph did it recently. But not within a community that's not 'aware-and-energized'. And despite how things may look around here...or amongst the people you hang with...the truth is that Hamilton is not such a community.

But look at it this way: we have nowhere to go but 'up'. Hopefully.

Comment edited by ThisIsOurHamilton on 2012-09-07 12:20:29

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