To the editor,
Re: Direct democracy would bring change, Letters, May 16.
Isn’t it a rather shameful pity that we live within a community/province/country which compels writers to employ redundancies the likes of ‘direct democracy’ and ‘participatory democracy’ in the effort to distinguish democracy from the monarchies which colour themselves with the oxymoron ‘representative democracy’ (aka, liberal democracy, parliamentary democracy)?
Compounding the tragedy, and without any apparent reference to the arithmetic which proves otherwise, we get an editorial which, again, tries to raise BC-STV from the dead. Please, do the arithmetic, for unless one is prepared to amalgamate all 87 of the legislature’s seats into a very few ‘at large’ ridings, and embrace the attendant complexity of such a ballot, the Green Party’s 16 per cent of ballots cast cannot provide it with 16 per cent of the legislature’s seats within the framework of an STV ballot, nor can any other form of PR vote which limits itself to a constituency-only framework. The laws governing numbers simply do not work that way.
David S. Dunaway, South Wellington
To the editor,
Re: Nanaimo MLA anticipates NDP-Green government, May 25.
The possible coalition government in B.C. has (again) raised the issue of a new voting system including the need for a referendum.
The electorate is too uninformed (ignorant?) and frankly not interested enough to become informed enough to make such a weighty decision.
Me and others became involved in the early stages of BC-STV in 2004 for exactly this reason. The government established an independent, non-partisan Citizens’ Assembly to do all the global research work and make a recommendation. Logically, I reasoned, I should trust their work and process.
Certainly, I would never trust strictly a government agency or politically partisan group (as they all inevitably seem to turn out to be) to do such work in an at-arms-length or ‘disinterested’ way that would truly serve the electorates interest primarily.
Given developments, it is the new B.C. government’s mandate and duty to press forward with electoral reform forthwith, without a referendum on the matter.
Jordan Ellis, Nanaimo
