Dear Editor:
Proportional representation (PR) is a way to make sure that every voter is effectively represented in the legislature. It is not a strategy that favours one party over any other. In fact it’s exactly the opposite: it’s a strategy to make sure the playing field is level and every party gets the representation that it deserves. That’s why the argument that the NDP is “stacking the deck” in favour of PR is so ridiculous.
Stacking the deck implies some kind of unfair advantage, but the government is advocating a change that would increase fairness to all parties by empowering all voters.
The unfair advantage is with the current voting system, as any objective look back at any election in B.C. or Canadian history will show. In nearly every past B.C. election, a party has won a majority government on the basis of between 400 and 45 per cent of the vote. Now that’s a stacked system!
So the “stack the deck” argument would immediately fall to pieces if only we could look at it rationally. But how can we? Most of the media opinionators broadcast this story far and wide over and over again. Why? Because it plays on people’s cynicism, distrust of government, and partisan self-interest. It's a good story: it’s attractive and it sells. It just happens to be false.
The strength and breadth of the onslaught against electoral reform should give us a pretty clear idea of how important this issue is. Those opposed to reform know very well that the existing voting system’s distortions have been beneficial to them. This applies to the BC Liberals, and also to a certain number of hopeful NDP strategists and insiders.
Meanwhile, we have the chance to reform our voting system so that it results in a legislature that more accurately represents what we the people have voted for. If you are a Liberal who is represented by an NDP MLA, is your voice fairly represented in the legislature? No it is not! Your NDP MLA does not vote for you! The same applies if your are an NDPer in a Liberal riding, or a Green or Conservative just about anywhere.
Why do we accept this state of affairs? Well, because that’s the way it is, right? Somebody has to win. Really? So we should leave things the way they are because that’s the way they are? That’s not a good enough reason.
Lots of countries use proportional voting systems and we can too. Opponents try to make it all sound very complicated. I guess they think we are too dumb to figure out what the majority of other developed democracies manage pretty well.
The real self interest in this story comes from the defenders of the status quo. They see the writing on the wall pretty clearly. In fact, during the recent B.C. Liberal leadership race, several candidates revealed that they thought electoral reform was an existential threat to their party. They explicitly said that the B..C Liberals would never win another majority if we changed to proportional representation. Who knows whether that’s true or not? What is certainly true is that the number of seats they’d be awarded in the legislature would closely match the number of voters who voted for them. And that would apply equally to every party.
Calling this reform undemocratic and saying it stacks the deck is exactly the opposite of the truth. Don’t buy it.
Iain Macanulty, Burnaby
