Please register my support for a Mixed Member Proportional [MMP]
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. As a young voter that has studied
background information on different electoral systems I strongly
support changing our current voting system.
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.
I have experience lobbying government for policy changes and
know first hand the frustration of finally achieving a policy only
to see it thrown out after the next election. The
current dramatic swings in policy from one government to the next
lead to frustration, burnout and ultimately reduced levels of
citizen involvement. 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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