Dear Editor:
I have been talking to people a lot of late about the vote to consider a change to the B.C. provincial voting system. The most common response to support a vote to retain the first past the post system is that they don’t like change. I find this surprising as the only thing that we can say for sure is that change happens constantly.
Democracies are meant to disperse power across different bodies so that no single body or individual can act unilaterally. Currently, a product of our first past the post voting system, the democracy in B.C. doesn’t disperse power effectively. Parties hold all the power with a small majority or no majority of the popular vote. My hope is that if we have a system of proportional representation, politicians will find it necessary to consider what the people who vote for them want and not just what their party supports. If proportional representation fails to accomplish this we will have an opportunity to vote to return to a first past the post system.
The vast majority of democracies have a proportional representation system. Indeed 90 democracies around the world vote this way. Consequently, it is possible to point to bad things that have happened in countries with this kind of voting system. It is also possible to point to many good things that happen in association with a proportional representation voting system.
Please consider a change to a proportional representation voting system. Please vote.
Ruth Campbell
Summerland