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“Affluent white men, and to a lessor extent affluent white women, are still heavily over-represented in our legislature. Parties can increase the representation of women and minorities by placing them at the top of their lists. New Zealand has seen a big increase in Maori representation since they adopted (mixed member) with closed lists.”

The mail-in referendum ballot asks voters whether they want to keep the current first-past-the-post system or change to one of three proportional representation options. In addition to mixed member, the other two options include dual member and rural urban proportional.

The deadline for Elections B.C. to receive the ballots is Nov. 30, requiring voters to put the ballots in the mail several days earlier to ensure they arrive on time.

The changes to mixed member, lack of basic details about the three models, lack of a requirement for a minimum voter turnout, and overall confusion about the process continue to point to major problems in the referendum, said Telford. The NDP government set the rules, including a tight timeline to bring in the system by 2021, and a promise of a referendum after two elections to decide whether to keep any changes.

“I think this speaks to the basic problem here, which is the government adopted a highly flawed process from the get-go and they’ve put themselves in a bad situation,” said Telford.

“I think the fundamental problem was based on experience that it’s impossible to enact electoral reform within one election cycle. You really need to do four years of ground work and then give people the option to vote if it is adopted, you then put in place for the following election presumably another four years down the road.

“But they tried to rush this through in four years which meant they had to have the referendum now. … They came out with three half-baked ideas, which makes it very difficult to campaign in favour of them, because all of the Yes campaigners are campaigning on P.R. in principle and voters are telling me, ‘How are these systems going work in particular?’ And they are not getting the answers.”

rshaw@postmedia.com

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