I fully support the process of electoral reform presently
underway by the Citizens' Assembly in BC.
Unless progressive electoral reform is obtained, we will
continue to have ridiculous, polarized elections where a low
popular vote percentage is enough to elect a large percentage of
representatives from a party. The result is no opposition and
governments that do not work hard enough to make effective
decisions (since they can push their own agenda with no checks when
in a large majority).
We need to have a government that represents citizens' diverse
views as well as the 'majority' opinion on various issues. I would
like to see a more diverse legislature/ parliament where, say, 3 or
4 parties plus independents play a significant role and where
minority governments are not considered a 'failure'. I want
politicians to work together and use the diversity of views to come
up with creative solutions to problems and to design effective
policy to prevent problems in the first place. Most issues should
be analyzed objectively according to scientific, environmental,
social, economic, ethical standards, rather than according to
public/media opinion or political agenda - 'democracy' needs to be
countered by good sense and knowledge. Party
'discipline' that forces MLAs to vote along 'party lines' must be
disallowed.
Since there are many ways to run elections, count votes, assign the
groups and the representation rate for each group, it is not simple
to select an appropriate electoral system. I suggest that a set of
5 different systems be proposed by the citizens assembly and we the
citizens get to sleect the one we want. Each method would be
analyzed according to a checklist of features to be defined by
citizens' assembly, for examples:
-
popular vote % (overall + in regions) must be within, say, 20%,
of the number seats elected
-
small parties or independents will get seats when more than 1%
of people vote for them
-
election results show a large diversity of parties when there is
diverse views on a wide range of
issues in the electorate
-
will the government be effective at solving problems that need
to be addressed (such as global warming, health care, social decay,
or pulp mill pollution) etc.
I would also like to see a way for people to vote on particular
issues of importance. Now, politicians do polling to assess
citizens' views. This is inadequate and depends on the questions
being asked and also there is no mandate to legislate according to
citizens views. The selection of the questions could be determined
by a diverse group of citizens (like the Citizens' Assembly). Some
legal mandate is required to ensure that the citizens' answers to
election questions are utilized in decision making (and politician
election promises kept).
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