MMP Will Clean Up Nominations

Here's a quote from Andrew Coyne this morning (HT) on the worries about list MPPs under MMP:

"Have you had a look at how candidates are chosen now? Where they are not appointed by the leader, they are typically chosen by busloads of instant members."

If anything, the selection of list members on a province-wide level would open up this process. A really crooked nomination process at the riding level usually does not merit attention in major media. Party hacks and friends of the leadership currently have little or no trouble getting riding nominations I suspect. An open nomination process such those proposed by all the major parties in Ontario would remove a great deal of that backroom influence.

Perhaps May can win?

Greg Morrow of democraticSPACE crunches some numbers and shows a way that Elizabeth May could actually make a play for Central Nova. My instincts (such as they are) make me skeptical about this (more so than Scott is at least), but it is at least plausible. Put another way, right now, I'd still put money on MacKay, much as I'd prefer he'd lose.

One wonders though, how much money the Greens will have to spend in Nova Scotia that they might have spent in those BC ridings where we are always told they might make a breakthrough.