Dear Editor:
Keith Baldrey, in his column May 24 (How Green will B.C. become?), like so many reporters when talking about the probable changes to the electoral system, expresses the potential change as “some kind of proportional representation of which he says are many.
That is not true. There is only one proportional representation where everybody, as we have always done, votes for the party but the count for each party is taken province wide so that 18 per cent of the vote gets 18 per cent of the seats, achieving a fair and sensible distribution of seats.
No other system does that. Commonly mentioned, falsely, as fair voting is STV or preference of voting for first, second, third, as if anyone in their right mind could do that or mixed member and a number of other suggestions all touted as proportional representation, which they are not.
Pure proportional representation has been used with great success in all of Scandinavia for many years.
Terry Smith, by email
