Government is not a sport

Dear editor: Re: NDP stacking voting-system deck by Les Leyne (Herald, Courier, May 2).

Leyne is continuing to support the BC Liberals anti-electoral reform campaign. In his hockey analogy, he says that the NDP and Greens are promoting electoral reform because they are concerned that they are not winning as often as they think they should. I submit that they want electoral reform because the present system, FPTP is patently unfair and denies huge numbers of voters the power of their votes.

Under FPTP, voters who live in a riding dominated by another party, might as well stay home because their vote won’t count towards electing a person to represent them. This is true of a Liberal voter in an NDP riding, an NDP voter in a Liberal riding, a Green voter in a Liberal riding, etc.

With proportional representation, voters may not elect their candidate in that riding, but their votes will go towards topping up their party’s seat count to reflect the party’s per cent of the popular vote. Everyone’s vote will count. There is a very good chance that every region of the province will have a representative from all parties.

No longer will there be the regional disparities that exist today.

I would suggest that Leyne and his anti-PR colleagues don’t want electoral reform, don’t want a fair system, don’t want a much more democratic system because their hockey team has usually won under the present system (FPTP) and in the world of sport, winning is everything.

Fortunately, good government is not a sport; it’s an expression of the voices of all the voters, working together to promote a strong British Columbia. Daryl Sturdy

Vancouver