I attended a meeting of the Citizens' Assembly in Victoria and
was impressed both by the manner in which the forum was conducted
and by the interest and even passion displayed by those who turned
out.
I believe there is widespread desire in this province for reform of
the electoral system. The past two provincial elections have
resulted in grossly undemocratic outcomes: in 1996 the NDP got a
majority of seats even though it came second in the popular vote,
and in 2001 the 42% of the electorate who did not support the
Liberals wound up being virtually unrepresented.
In my opinion the Assembly should recommend a Mixed Member
Proportional (MMP) system, a system that combines the benefit of
local representation with a fair overall distribution of seats.
Under our present system, most people who vote might better have
stayed home, since their votes contribute absolutely nothing to
determining the final seat totals. (This is true even of those
votes for a winning candidate that are in excess of the total
required to win the seat.) Under MMP, all that would change; no
vote would be wasted. A threshold of, say, 5% of the total
provincial vote for a party to qualify for list seats would guard
against the possibility of winding up with a multiplicity of tiny
parties in the legislature.
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