Times change. Democracy needs to change and evolve with the
times. Within the scope of this mandate (to examining how votes
should be translated into seats for the Legislative Assembly), the
only fair way I can see is through proportional representation. If
x% of the population of this province support a particular partisan
platform, why should not their voices be heard, and thus
represented by x% of the MLAs?
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
On the topic of proportional representation, I have lived in
Germany and have first-hand experience with such a system that
appears to work quite well.
For BC, I strongly hold the position that we should follow the
example of New Zealand, the world's most recent example of a
country/region which switched to MMP.
I am not so convinced that an arbitrary minimum of 5% voter cut-off
is necessary, however (as is adopted by New Zealand), as there is
automatically a threshold based on the number of seats in the
Legislature (i.e. 1 of 79 seats is approximately 1.3% of the seats,
which means that a minimum of about 0.7% of the vote is required,
with rounding taken into consideration).
To get beyond partisan politics, it may be useful to augment this
with continued form of constituency system, which I have noticed
has already been proposed by many contributors to this Assembly
(e.g. a 2/3-1/3 dual-vote system). I think this compromise would be
quite acceptable.
Finally, I would like to ad that I am not afraid of any problems
that would result from a MMP system that will almost eliminate
majority governments. Majority government are often the very source
of the problem: when a party has complete control, when a sizable
portion or even the majority of the province haven't given them the
mandate. With MMP, more opposing voices in the Leg. will ensure
that the leading party/parties heed their promises.
LONG-RUN
In the long run, we need much more than just MMP. We need more
citizens involvement then just marking a name on a ballot once in a
while. One of the most important additional advances would be a
form direct democracy (e.g. as practiced in Switzerland), which is
very realistic these days with the availability of the internet in
even the most remote regions of BC, enabling the public to easily
participate in on-line referendums and other participatory
decision-making processes.
Voter apathy is high. Reducing wasted votes through MMP will help
solve this, but it is not enough: we need to enforce accountability
of politicians. We also need to commit to a real effort to engage
and empower the youth - the future of the province, the country,
and the world.
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