A12 - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, April 11, 2001

Referendum wanted

Make every vote
count: reformers

By SARAH A.

ZIMMERMAN
A REFERENDUM should
be held so British Colum-
bians can change how pro-
vinelal elections are run,
says a group pushing elec-
toral reform.

Fair Voting B.C. wants
a form of proportional re-
presentation to replace the
present first-past-the-posl
system.

Right now the candi-
date that gets the most
votes in a riding is elected,
The party that wins the
most seats then usually
forms the government.

But Fair Voting spokes-
man Stuart Parker, the far-
merc leader of the B.C,
Green party, says the cur-
rent system leads people
to vote for front-runners
because supporting small
fringe parties is often con-
sidered a wasted vote.

“Our case is that people
care about this because
they want their votes to
count,” said Parker, who
visited Terrace as part of a
province-wide tour to press
the issue.

He cites declining voter
turn-out as evidence that
people feel their votes
don’t count and that the
system should be reformed.

“People vote strategic-
ally,” said Parker,
“Usually people put an X
by the name of the person
they hate the second
most.”

Proportional representa-
tion is backed by many
smaller parties because it
would allocate seats based
on the percentage of the
popular vote they received
province-wide.

Instead of having to ac-
tually get more votes than
any other party in an indi-
vidual riding to win a seat,
they’d be entitled to a seat
in the legislature. with as

little as two per cent of -the

popular vote.
That could easily trans-
late into a seat or two for
parties like the Marijuana
Party or the Christian Her-
itage Party, and likely a

significant block of seats

for the Greens.

Proportional representa-
tion would also end situa-
tions like what happened
in the 1996 election, when
the B.C. Liberals got a lar-
ger percentage of the pop-
ular vote but the NDP for-
med the government.

“The current system
distorts our votes,” says
Fair Voting B.C. founder
Nick Loenen. “If you fook
at the last election, more
people voted for the Lib-
eral party than the NDP
yet we have an ND
party.”

Parker notes B.C. is one
of three provinces now
ruled by parties that came
second in the popular vote.

“We've seen an enor-
mous misuse of govern-
ment power,” he said. “It’s
time that we not only re-
place the government
that’s there now but we
need to fix the machinery
of the government.”

Assigning seats by pop-
ular vote would produce a
more accurate result, Loe-

nen said, and give seats to -

smaller parties whose
votes presently don’t
count.

It might also often re-
sult in no one party having
enough seats to form a
Majority government.

That’s okay, Loenen
says, because the govern-
ing party would either
have to work cooperatively

with smaller ones or form’

a coalition in order to re-
main in power.

And Parker said: that -

would lead to increased
representation of minority:
parties' views,.

“The first-past-the-post
system produces very con-
frontational politics,” he
. Said. “In a coalition sys-
tem parties would work to-.

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Stuart Parker
gether.”

He says the key to voter
reform would be develop-
ing a system that will work
for B.C. specifically.

There are different var-

iants of proportional repre-
sentation and finding the
right model could take up
to 10 years, he said.

“What we need to do is
devise a system that works
for this province.”

So far the NDP has
been the main opponent of
electoral change, Parker
said.

Some pundits have sug-
gested the parly could be
wiped out in the coming
election, winning no seats
at all and leaving a B.C.
Liberal government with
no opposition.

Ironically, proportional,
representation would also
prevent that. Even if the
NDP got only 15 per cent
of the vote, it would still
get 15 per cent of the seats
under that system.

Dinner
5-10 p.m.
Tuesday to

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