PR voting system is fair

Dear Editor: Re: Say ‘no’ proportional representation, (Editorial, Dec. 6).

What has happened to James Miller?

Has the long commute between Penticton and Kelowna addled his brain or was he bamboozled by all the Liberal leadership wannabes at the last leadership debate?

His diatribe against proportional representation was way off base. Pro rep is not complicated. If any party gets 40 per cent of the vote, they get 40 per cent of the seats. If a party gets 20 per cent of the votes, they get 20 per cent of the seats.

This is not difficult and, most important, it is fair. The most egregious example of what first-past-the-post can deliver was the 2001 B.C. election. The BC Liberals got 77 of 79 seats. (Now we know why the Liberals like the current system!) The NDP got two seats and the BC Greens got zero seats. The NDP got 21.5 per cent of the vote and about three per cent of the seats, while the Greens got 12.4 per cent of the votes for zero per cent of the seats.

If anyone, including James Miller, thinks that these are fair results, well, their logic escapes me. In that election the Liberals did get 57 per cent of the vote and they would have had a majority government under a pro rep system, but the other parties would have had fair representation.

Miller also says that the smaller parties should get better quality candidates, but it is extremely difficult to get these candidates when the party has a next to zero chance of electing anybody. Remember, the Greens got 12.4 per cent of the vote in 2001, yet zero members were elected.

Proportional representation can’t come soon enough for me and I look forward to a successful referendum next year. Tom Hoenisch

Naramata