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KAMLOOPS – The provincial government plans to hold a referendum on an electoral reform later this year and it could drastically change the voting procedure for provincial elections going forward.

The government is seeking the public’s input online until Feb. 28 to determine what should be on the ballot for the referendum later this year. A date for the referendum hasn't been set yet.

The B.C. government has created a website where the public can learn more about the different types of election possibilities and can participate in questionnaires and surveys to offer input on how the referendum should be designed and what questions should be asked.

Essentially the decision is whether to keep the current first-past-the-post system or change to proportional representation for B.C. provincial elections.

The current system, first-past-the-post, is an electoral system that grants control to the party who wins the most seats in an election, regardless of the percentage of the popular vote it wins.

Proportional representation allots seats based on the popular vote. For example, if a party wins 39 per cent of the popular vote, they would control 39 per cent of the seats in the legislature.

Fair Vote Kamloops is a non-partisan group working to see a change to proportional representation.

Gisela Ruckert is the Director of Fair Vote Kamloops and she wants the public to be informed going into the referendum.

“It’s a chance we are getting now to rethink our system and look at options objectively and say what does the research show,” Ruckert says.

She believes through various independent and government funded studies that proportional representation creates a better working government.

“Our current system, it creates a very adversarial atmosphere in the legislature, instead of debating the legislation, they tend to attack each other personally a lot,” Ruckert says.

Proportional representation will lead to more minority governments according to Ruckert. But she believes that could be a good thing.

“Minority governments have given us things like the Canadian Pension plan, medical care policies, student loans, the Canadian flag and they have lasted. Because they have the support of the majority of the people,” Ruckert says.

There are opponents to proportional representation and the referendum though.

B.C. Liberal leadership candidate and Kamloops MLA Todd Stone believes the NDP government survey and questionnaire is biased.

“It’s extremely partisan, slanted, and the questions have clearly been written in such a way so as to influence the results in favour of a move towards proportional representation,” Stone said in a press release in November 2017.

“The NDP is clearly trying to suggest that a change in our system of voting is the only way to ensure an MLA will act in the interest of their constituents,” Stone says in the release. “This is completely false and frankly an insult to the hard work MLAs do every single day on behalf of individual constituents.”

For more information and to participate in the B.C. governments survey, check out their website here.

For more information on Fair Vote Kamloops, visit their Facebook page here.

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