THE 3 OPTIONS
Voters who support proportional representation in an upcoming electoral-reform referendum could find themselves having to choose one of three proportional electoral systems proposed by the provincial government:
DUAL-MEMBER PROPORTIONAL (DMP)
Most of B.C.’s single-MLA districts are combined with a neighbouring district to create about half as many districts, but each with two MLAs. The largest rural districts continue to have a single MLA. Parties nominate one or two candidates in each district and voters get to cast one vote for the candidate or pair of their choosing. First seats are won by the local candidate with the most votes, while second seats are filled with remaining candidates from the parties to create a proportional election outcome based on seats won in the legislature. The B.C. government says DMP “can provide highly proportional results.” University of B.C. political scientist Max Cameron called it a “brilliant” system, but noted that people seem to have a hard time understanding it, which may account for why it finished third place in a 2016 Prince Edward Island plebiscite.
MIXED-MEMBER PROPORTIONAL (MMP)
British Columbians vote for one independent or party-affiliated candidate in their riding (first past the post) as well as a second party or candidate for a “list PR” seat allocated on a provincial or regional level. Candidates for the “list PR” seat are either elected or picked from a party’s list of candidates to compensate for any disproportional results from firstpast-the-post voting, “so that the overall result is fairly proportional,” according to the government. MMP is used in New Zealand, Bolivia, Germany, Scotland, Wales and Lesotho. Cameron said MMP is more intuitive than the other choices, but he wonders whether candidates for list PR seats will come from parties’ ranks and “closed” lists or from “open” lists made public to voters, which is preferred by proportional representation proponents.
RURAL-URBAN OR ‘FLEXIBLE DISTRICT’ PROPORTIONAL
Developed to address the demographic and geographic needs of Canadian voters, seats in multi member districts are filled by single transfer able vote( multiple MLAs are elected in each electoral district, voters rank candidates by preference) in urban and semi-urban areas, and by MMP in rural areas. Some seats in the MMP regions are filled proportionally on a regional basis by list PR. Cameron said rural-urban proportional seems to boil down to single-transferable votes in big cities and suburbs, and first-past-the-post in rural ridings, supplemented by larger regional districts across B.C., perhaps representing areas as large as Vancouver Island and the Okanagan, for example.