Change in voting system a boost for democracy

Re: “Weaver changes tune on voting change,” column, Dec. 9.

Les Leyne seems totally fixated on “political gain.” Anything he writes about proportional representation has focused on the argument that only the Green Party will make some huge “political gain” and completely upset all political sanity in the province.

Leyne is missing the point of proportional representation and what it means. The point is that any of the proportional representation voting systems elevate every vote to a vote that counts. That means that even my puny vote can make a difference; I can be heard!

In my 60s, I have always voted for the lesser of evils. I have seldom been on the winning side. I was never asked if I agreed with pipelines, shoreline pumping stations, Site C or LNG.

These were programs dictated by the last government and advertised on television almost every half hour by a beaming Christy Clark, who proclaimed that “everybody would have jobs and everything would be wonderful.” Never mind the environmental impact that jeopardizes our ecology and/or lays waste to thousands of agricultural acres. I wonder who paid the millions of dollars for those ads?

For me, the 2017 election was an exhilarating experience, a dream come true, voting from the heart instead of the lesser of evils.

Therefore I ask you to please, for once, set aside your partisan fear-mongering and respect the fairly large cross-section of society that sees PR as a way that ordinary people can be heard above the din and roar of big, for-profit industry. Ron Wurtz Shawnigan Lake