Editor: In the 1996 B.C. general election, the NDP won about 52 per cent of the seats in the legislature. But they got only 39 per cent of the popular vote. In the 2013 election, the Liberals won about 58 per cent of the seats with only 44 per cent of the popular vote.
In our present first-past-the-post voting system, the winning party often gets more seats in the legislature than it deserves. And people who vote for less-popular parties are often under-represented – they are short-changed by our voting system.
Many advanced countries, such as Germany, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand, have solved these problems by adopting a mixed-member proportional system.
With this system, we would each have a somewhat larger local riding. We would choose a single MLA to represent our local riding – as we do now. However, we would also vote for a short list of regional party candidates. These regional candidates would then be used to correct over- and under-represented parties in the legislature.
I’m urging my friends to choose this MMP system in our coming B.C. referendum. If we go proportional, the government has promised a second referendum after two elections. Let’s try it for our next two B.C. elections.
Steve Grice, Burnaby
