Voting
I’m going to be out of the province on election day (May 17) so I took advantage of advance voting which started today. So it’s too late to sway my vote — yes, Gregor, I’m talking to you.
Single Transferable Vote
There are two ballots this time around: one for the riding candidates and one for the BC-STV referendum. The second one is very important, so if you’re scratching your head wondering what STV (not SCTV) is all about, then I strongly urge you to find out!
In a nutshell, this will change the way we vote in BC. We currently have a “first-past-the-post” system where the first candidate to reach 50%+1 votes wins that riding’s seat. This can lead to pretty unbalanced representation, especially if there are many contested ridings. Theoretically, a party could win 100% of the seats with only 51% of the popular vote. Just look at the last provinicial election or Chretien’s Liberal landslide victory and you’ll see how easy it is for a large portion of voters to be under-represented by their government.
If the “Single Transferrable Vote” passes then the system will change to give voters more say in who gets elected. You’ll have the option to vote on more than one candidate, ranking them in order of preference. So if you like candidate A but think that candidate B has a lot to offer too, you can actually vote for both (ranking A first). The math to determine which candidates win is somewhat complicated, but STV will offer you more choice and will help break the current two-party dynamic. So if your favourite party receives 12% of the popular vote, odds are that they’ll also win 12% of the seats too.
Which leads me to …
Vote Splitting
This fear tactic is usually played late in an election. Carole James made this appeal just on Monday, warning voters to choose the NDP to prevent a Liberal victory.
It really boils down to one of the two major parties saying, “Vote for us, we’re the lesser evil!” Don’t fall for it. Do you really want to elect a government or an opposition that you consider to be the lesser evil? I know of one successful federal party that has pulled off this tactic with aplomb, winning the election hands-down. Even if your preferred party has no real chance at forming a government, they’ll be able to represent you as the opposition. Isn’t that what you want instead?
You may not think your vote matters, but I do and so do many others. When the popular vote results come out after the election, it sends a strong message to those in power about what the electorate cares about. Just look at how many “green” initiatives have been added to the Liberal and NDP platforms after the Green party won 12% of the popular vote in 2001.
Your vote matters, make it count!
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