Please register my support for a Mixed Member Proportional
electoral system for British Columbia. I have read with
interest your Preliminary Statement to the People of BC and would
like to say thank you for taking your mandate so seriously and
putting such effort into your deliberations.
There are numerous problems with our current system of
“First past the post”. I am tired and
frustrated by having my vote not count, when I vote for a party
that does not get representation in the legislature. I have seen
amongst my friends and community that the need for
“strategic” voting that is favored by this
system (voting for a party you don’t support in the
hopes that they will defeat a party you support even less) leads to
apathy and low voter turnout. Large parties are favored over
smaller ones, leading to inadequate representation of the diversity
of BC’s communities. “Why bother
voting?” I hear friends say, “the two main
parties are practically the same and if I vote for anyone else my
vote probably won’t count.” Fundamentally
this system is unfair, as the number of seats elected
don’t reflect the number of votes a party receives.
I suggest implementing a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)
electoral system, which combines single member electoral districts
with a party vote list system. By giving each voter two votes (1
for their local electoral district representative and the other for
the political party of their choice) this system retains the
important local representation of our current system while allowing
greater proportional representation. MMP encourages fairness by
ensuring that the number of votes a party receives relates directly
to their number of seats. Personally I would like to
see more women, more people of colour and a wider range of people
from different social classes making up our legislature. Making
public the party lists of candidates prior to elections will
encourage greater gender, cultural and geographic diversity in all
parties and promote governments that are more representative of
BC’s great diversity.
A MMP system will lead to more effective governments: coalition
governments that need to cooperate and negotiate, resulting in
legislation that is more representative of wider interests and
therefore more likely to last beyond the mandate of a single
government. This in turn will facilitate more effective
implementation of policy by civil servants. Finally, a MMP
electoral system will encourage me as a young voter to be more
interested and involved in the politics of this province. The
thought of greater voter turnout and more involved citizens gives
me hope for democracy in BC.
Please recommend changing BC’s current electoral
system to a Mixed Member Proportional system.
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