I believe BC should move towards a 50% proportional/50% FPTP
(first past the post) electoral system [MMP].
I absolutely do not believe we should require a party to reach a
certain percentage of votes beyond the percentage necessary to win
one seat to be eligible for forwarding proportionally elected
members. For example, if there are 50 proportionally elected seats,
then a party should be eligible to have a seat when 1/50th or 2% of
the voters have voted for them. In BC there are currently 79 seats.
Therefore, in a 50/50 MMP, there could be 39 or 40 proportionally
elected seats. Thus, if a party received 1/39th of the popular vote
or 2.56%, they would win a proportional seat. The idea of a party
needing 10%, or whatever arbitrary figure, in order to be eligible
for proportional seats, is ridiculous. The whole point of having
proportional representation is to elect governments that actually
represent the ideology of the entire electorate, not to continue
the tyranny of the majority. If we had a proportional system that
required a party to receive more votes than the proportion
necessary to gain a seat, there would be no point in changing the
system. It would still leave nearly all the power with the
established parties, but it would give these parties more control
over who in their party received seats. That makes no sense. It's
not proportional. It's even less democratic than our current
system, which judging by the discrepancy between the popular vote
versus number of seats held by the ruling parties of the last 12
years, and judging by voter apathy, isn't very democratic.
At least part of the reason there is so much voter apathy these
days is because people feel voting is futile. Their
political views are not represented in government.
Actual proportional representation would enable
under-represented views to be heard in the
legislature. Coalition governments would be more inclined to
introduce legislation that represents more balanced political
views. Collaborative politicians would be more inclined to succeed;
autocratic politicians would be more likely to fail. That would be
good.
Now, the ambiguity in a 50/50 MMP is how to allocate the
proportionally elected representatives. If BC suddenly had only 39
or 40 ridings, constituents may start to feel geographically under
represented, especially in large rural ridings. One possible
solution for this problem would be to also assign a proportionally
elected MLA to each riding in addition to the FPTP MLA. There are
many possibilities for how the proportionally elected MLAs would be
geographically assigned, one being each party choosing in which
ridings they would like to assign a proportionally elected MLA. The
party with the most votes could choose the first seat, the party
with the second most votes the second seat, and so on, until all
ridings have been assigned. This is one possibility of many.
The decision to switch to a different electoral system should be
decided in a referendum by the people of BC. The content of that
referendum should be very carefully determined by the Citizens'
Assembly, with numerous options to choose from, and a great deal of
resources allocated for public education about this issue.
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