As we all know, the present system of electing a government is
just no longer acceptable to British Columbians (or Canadians at
the Federal level) as it allows governments to be
elected with less than 40% of the total votes cast, thus rendering
a majority (60%) of votes effectively ineligible usually because of
vote splitting when multiple parties are involved in the election
process.
Proportional representation is less than democratic as it rewards
political parties with seats in the legislature just
because of their portion of the total vote and NOT because they
have earned it at the ballot box. As far as I am personally
concerned, political parties should be far less
obtrusive when it comes to elections and forming governments than
the candidate(s) who are being elected.
Political parties are important as a basic (policy) platform to
being elected but it should be the voter who finally decides who
would be most appropriate as the local MLA , NOT the nominating
meeting of a local political party. This system of
selecting suitable candidates has been proven all too often as
being corrupt and anti-democratic as it denies the
voter to choose not only the party but the candidate that they
would be most comfortable with as their local MLA.
Such corruption (stacking nomination meetings and membership
drives) usually takes place mainly in parties that encourage ethnic
involvement instigated by less than morally scrupulous political
activists who turn it to their own advantage, rather than
respect the democratic rights of the majority of party
members.
This is primarily why I would prefer and ultimately choose the
system of single transferable vote as used in France and Russia, by
which candidates in a multi-party election would be eliminated when
they make up less than 25% of the total votes cast in the first
ballot, thus removing all chances of vote splitting.
The successful candidate would be required to obtain not less than
50%+1 of total votes cast to be elected, which could be either
achieved by proportional distribution of the failed votes (of the
other candidates) between the 2 top candidates to gain the required
50%+1 or have to go to a second runoff election in which only the
top 2 candidates would be involved. The candidate achieving 50%+1
of total votes cast in any riding would be legally elected as the
MLA.
I do belong to a particular BC political party which, for the most
part, has a political philosophy and platform that is substantially
coincidental or complementary to my own politics. So I
would not have any difficulty in either running as a
nominee/candidate for that party should I be duly selected.
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