News release

Citizens' Assembly reaches 20

The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform brought its membership up to 20 with the selection of 10 new members Thursday night.

Selected at a meeting in Terrace were:

Drawn at a meeting in Williams Lake were:

Pritchard, 23, is a forest technologist, married, with one daughter. VanderMeulen, 40, is a receptionist and mother of two boys.

Green, 36, is a fire suppression technician who spent five years in the military. He's single. Anderson, 58, teaches First Nations studies at the University of Northern B.C. She's a member, by marriage, of the Hartley Bay Tsimshian community.

Hart is a retired elementary school teacher, with four daughters and six grandchildren. Scholz, 73, retired from Alcan and is known for his weekly German radio program on CJFW-FM.

Crosson, 80, is a retired florist, a marriage commissioner, and a grandmother of eight. Naccarato owns and runs the McDonald's outlet in Williams Lake. He's married, with three children.

Monk is a 56-year-old outdoor sportsman and conservationist who works for Cariboo Pulp. Rankin, 40, is an environmental technician and also works for Cariboo Pulp. She's married, with two children.

By Nov. 25, the Assembly will have 158 members from all over B.C. -- one man and one woman from each of the 79 provincial electoral districts. The 158-member Assembly will spend much of 2004 examining electoral systems in use around the world, and will decide if they should propose a change to B.C.’s current system of translating votes into seats in the Legislature.

If the Assembly members recommend a change, it will be the subject of a referendum for all voters in the 2005 provincial election. Any change approved by the voters would take effect with the 2009 B.C. election.