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With PR, you get what you vote for
Letter to the Editor
On September 19, BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson reportedly got 35 minutes of the Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce’s time to bash Proportional Representation (PR) to a friendly audience.
Then, Wilkinson got a free ride in the Kimberley Bulletin, again bashing PR with partisan virtuosity, laden with dubious and untrue factoids. See https://www.fairvote.ca/pr4bc-faqs-mythbusters/ for a corrective.
But here’s the thing: the electoral referendum is the best opportunity in our lifetimes to get a better measure of democracy into our electoral system. With PR, you get what you vote for, not what as few as 30% of folks voted for. Democratic representation matters.
Those opposed have deep pockets and big voices. The BC Liberals are on the record whinging that if PR is adopted they may never get another majority again, as if a Liberal majority is the primary concern of a democratic electoral system. Their spin-off anti-PR groups and allies are spending and speaking. Fair Vote Canada has noted that 75% of the B.C. editorials are opposed to PR, and that during the last referendum the ‘no’ side strategically spent the majority of their money in the last two weeks. We can anticipate this again.
This referendum will decide the fate of B.C.’s electoral system and thus of how we express our wishes for political representation. Do we stay with First-Past-the-Post (FPTP), and continue to vote in elections where about a third of the eligible voters don’t bother to show up and another good chunk of us vote strategically for a candidate and party we don’t really like, in an effort to avoid a win by a candidate and party we really don’t like?
Or do we move to a system of Proportional Representation, which is truly representative of voters’ wishes and better able to deal with the complexities of our modern world? As Ann Remnant of Nelson says, I want PR because I want my vote to count. And I want my neighbour’s vote to count too.
Still unclear how PR (and maybe FPTP) works? Check out Fair Vote Canada’s website and pledge.
And, come out to our pro-PR event on October 24 in Cranbrook at the Ktunaxa Nation gym, 220 Cranbrook St. N., at 7 p.m., featuring guest speaker Glen Ewan of Golden and others.
Joyce Green,
Cranbrook
