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Far be it from this writer to sing the praises of our elected officials, especially out here on the west coast.
B.C. has waded into truly uncharted political territory with the creation of the Citizen's Assembly for Electoral Reform, the body charged with the task of determining whether the voters need a new system of electing government. Heady stuff. In as much as the title of the commission sounds mundane, it will take on a task that most argue is long overdue: examining the very system of representative democracy. Throughout the nation, government is elected by what is commonly known as a "first past the post" system. That is, the party that wins the greatest number of seats or ridings forms the government. On the surface, that seems fair and logical. The complicating factor is that ridings are not all the same size. B.C. ridings like Peace River North and Peace River South have significantly smaller populations than urban districts in and around Vancouver or Victoria. In effect, the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) elected in Peace River North may have received significantly fewer votes than the candidate in Vancouver who lost. It is true that the Peace River MLA legitimately beat the opposing candidates in his riding (though even within a riding there is no requirement for the victor to obtain fifty percent of the votes cast). Therefore, the constituents of any given riding elect as their representative the candidate that more people than not selected. As it should be, most argue. As a whole, however, it is rare that the number of victorious seats throughout the province parallels the total will of the electorate. In B.C.'s most recent provincial election, the Liberal party received approximately fifty-eight percent of the votes cast throughout the province. Yet, due to the uneven distribution of the population throughout electoral ridings, the Liberals won seventy-seven of seventy-nine ridings, or roughly ninety-seven percent of the available seats. One in five British Columbians voted for the provincial New Democrat candidate in their riding. The NDP won two seats or two percent. The fledgling Green Party of BC received in the neighbourhood of twelve percent of the popular vote. They failed to capture even a single seat. It's difficult to view those results as representative of the people's will. |
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