NDP Pushing Electoral Reform
Prince George, B.C. – The BC NDP wants to put electoral reform back on the table.
MLA Gary Holman, the party’s spokesperson for Democratic Reform, says John Horgan promised to pursue the idea after being elected party leader earlier this year.
As a result Holman says it will be his job in the next year or so to talk to communities and stakeholders about moving the idea forward.
He says once the outreach is complete, (which may include a stop in Prince George) the party will “develop a platform commitment.”
Holman acknowledges people voted unanimously against electoral reform in 2009 (61% against) but says it was likely due to the system put forward (Single Transferable Vote).
“The NDP has traditionally favoured a mixed-member proportional system which I think is more intuitive and used in more countries around the world.”
In addition he says the public’s thirst for electoral change was evident in the 2005 referendum which showed 58% of voters favoured the idea.
Holman says the whole reason behind exploring a different system to the current one (First-past-the-post) is to ensure fairness in the electoral process.
“The idea is to get the percentage of votes being collected more closely aligned with the percentage of MLA`s for each of the parties.”
Comments
So the NDP is still looking for reasons as to why they weren’t elected? lol
The NDP does not have any kind of political will, it has no vision, other than taxing business and workers, and paying huge salaries to those who don’t understand the meaning of productive work.
How can you form a Government or get people to vote for you, if you have nothing to offer??
They had everything working in their favour the last election and they still lost,. Only a political party that is lost in the wilderness could have lost that election.
Changing leaders without cleaning out a lot of the **hangers on** wont solve their problem.
I think over time we will see the new Provincial Conservative party take centre right in BC politics, and we will see the so called Liberals (which are actually a coalition of socreds, conservatives, and liberals) morph into a centre left Liberal party, and the elimination of the NDP as a political entity in the Province.
If not, we will be stuck with what we have for a Government, which in my opinion is not much.
Changing the electoral system, is the way those who cannot form a Government can sneak in through the back door, and pretend that they are major players.
If the NDP were in power, would we be having this conversation??
Electoral reform to dippers means no secret ballot and no I.D. required to register to vote. It also means campaign contribution limits on everyone except worker mandated contributions to unions. It means no-third party advertising by anyone at anytime, other than those produced by unions.
When Christy Clark wins another term in the next election the ndp will be crying ” Mommmmmy!!!! The people of BC won’t let me have a turn!”
Wow Palopu, you are certainly bang on this morning!!
I could live with a new centre right Conservative party and a new centre left Liberal party! Would probably be far more workable that our far right wing Liberals and our extremely far left wingnut NDP’ers!
I would suggest to you that the Liberals under Christy Clark already occupy that Centre right area of politics, and any Conservative party in BC is going to be more right wing than the Liberals currently are.
Personally I don’t believe that the Provincial PC party has any chance of getting organized enough to get out of its own way, much less actually become any sort of political force.
I will say this though, the surest way to end up with the dippers in government is for the Provincial Conservatives to get strong enough to actually siphon some of that right wing vote away from the Liberals
Good strategy, if you can’t win with the rules set the way they are, try to change the rules. It is actually the smartest thing I have heard come out of the NDP camp in a long time.
Is there any indication that any of the world’s jurisdictions that have a “mixed member proportional” electoral system are better governed than those with a “first past the post” electoral system? Didn’t think so.
The revolt by Provincial NDP to replace its female leader with a male leader may have contributed to not winning the past election. NDP past leader was also afraid to attack Clark; and BC NDP ‘again’ failed to coordinate with BC Greens and NDP lost more than 10 seats as a result of vote splitting with the Greens. They need to look at Federal conservatives in how they coordinated with BQ and NDP and managed to bring down the Liberals under Martin and unify the right and rule in Ottawa.
BC NDP can come into power, if it coordinates with the BC Greens in next election or if the BC conservatives under its new leader manages to split the BC Liberal vote.
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