A group of people travelling around Nelson-Creston on behalf of nelson4pr, a Nelson group advocating for proportional representation, say about half the people they talk to are aware of the upcoming referendum.
“It is about 50-50 but it depends on which town you are in,” said Sjeng Derkx at an event at Lakeside Park on Saturday that was attended by about 40 people.
“On the street in Nelson,” said Herb Couch, “I was surprised how many people were aware of this issue. They don’t necessarily know the details, but that is increasing too.”
Gusti Callis says he recently hit the streets in Creston to talk up proportional representation.
“Although a lot of people were not aware of it, as soon as we starting talking about it, a lot of people said this is a great idea.”
“Especially young people,” Derkx says. “They get it instantly, that it is a good idea and we need to change.”
The referendum will decide whether B.C. will change from the current voting system, known as first past the post, to a proportional representation system. The vote will proceed by a ballot that must be mailed in between Oct. 22 and Nov. 30.
The ballot will ask two questions. The first is whether B.C. should switch to proportional representation. The second will list three systems of proportional representation and ask the voter to rank them. The provincial government’s official information on the referendum and the three voting systems can be found at https://elections.bc.ca/referendum/.
The provincial government’s voter’s guide for the referendum is attached below.
The guest speaker at Saturday’s event was former Nelson-Creston MLA and cabinet minister Corky Evans. He discussed the basics tenet of proportional representation, which is that it ensures the share of seats a political party wins in the legislature is about the same as the party’s share of the popular vote.
He also said a proportional representation system could transform the culture of the legislature.
“Where proportional representation is the rule, and you decide to run for office and you win, you don’t ever get to just do whatever the hell you believe. Because you can’t form a strong enough power base to shove it down people’s throats. You gotta figure out how to talk with these people over here, on the other side, who don’t agree with you at all, they just ran against you.”
He said you have to learn to talk with them, “no matter how dead wrong they might be.”
The current system, he said, discourages compromise and encourages disrespect and isolation.
“You take nice people like Corky Evans, and you send him down there and turn him into a raving jerk to the other people. Shoutin’ at ’em. Because you don’t need them and you don’t want the people that sent you there to see you giving up on the hard-line principles that you announced to get you there.
“There is a cafeteria in the basement of the legislature and one team sits over here and the other sits over there and everybody looks to see if anybody is chatting with the bad guys. And that is not because they are stupid people. I think the people who get elected in B.C. are a classy bunch of folks and I say that about even some of the people I think are dead wrong. They came there with at least the integrity it takes to believe in something and say it out loud.
“But they come into a culture in which talking to those folks [on the other side] is not only irrelevant but dangerous to your career.”
At the rally, participants cast ballots in a pizza referendum designed to mimic the way a provincial election under proportional representation would work. They were asked to rank five kinds of pizza on a ballot.
The vote was done by STV (single transferable vote, one method of proportional representation). The vote counting was complicated, according to organizer Ann Remnant.
“But we all got what we wanted,” she said. “That’s proportional representation for you.”
bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
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