Re: Pro-PR must keep it simple, NOW Opinion, July 11
In his analysis of the electoral reform campaign, columnist Keith Baldrey skimmed over the reason we’re having the campaign in the first place, which is that our current first-past-the-post voting system does not work all that well.
The job at hand is to elect representatives to the legislature, and it does that. But is that enough? Do the seats in the legislature resemble the way we voted? No, they don’t. And that’s the problem.
At the riding level, about half the voters in every riding end up with a representative they didn’t vote for and very likely don’t agree with on major policy issues.
At the regional level, quite a few regions end up dominated by MLAs from one party, meaning that voters for other parties are not represented either in government or opposition. This exacerbates regional differences and leads to bad legislative decisions that may favour certain areas of the province or fail to serve others.
At the provincial level, we regularly end up with majority governments that are elected on the basis of around 40 per cent of the overall vote, leading again to legislation that isn’t representative of what we as an electorate would actually like.
These are serious problems, and that’s why electoral reform is such an important issue. So yes, we need to consider the pros and cons that Keith mentioned in his column, but the starting point has to be the recognition that our existing first-past- the-post voting system is not that great at the task it’s supposed to do. We get elected representatives all right, but how well do they reflect our votes?
Iain Macanulty, Burnaby
