PR system not ‘pure,’ but would be more fair

Re: “It bodes ill for B.C.,” comment, Oct. 28. The twisted logic in Bruce Strachan’s analysis shows us why the Social Credit party no longer exists. To say Trump, who was elected by a firstpast-the-post system, succeeded because the process was not “pure” is absurd. FPTP is never “pure.”

There never has been and never will be an election where every electoral district has exactly the same number of voters. FPTP is always unfair. The proposed proportional-representation system tries to fix this problem with three options, none of which could be called “pure,” but they are all more fair.

Big money likes FPTP because it is less expensive to influence (buy) the vote when 40 per cent of the vote yields 100 per cent of the power. Safe ridings can be ignored and swing ridings get the bulk of campaign attention and money. Six ridings of the 87 in B.C. were swing ridings in the last election. These people made the decision on who got power. Not many people are actually deciding anything.

Failed political parties are not the best source of wisdom in a world that is becoming infinitely more complex than a horse-race FPTP; these are not the horse-and-buggy days.

I like mixed-member proportional because of its success in Germany and New Zealand, and I get to vote for a candidate and party separately. William Brown Victoria