Proportional representation isn’t just an effort to make the Green Party relevant, as some people claim. PR is an effort to make every vote count.

The problems with first-past-the-post were perfectly illustrated in the riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith in the last federal election. The winning candidate got less than a third of the votes cast. More than two-thirds of voters had zero impact on the makeup of Parliament. In a democracy, that’s just wrong. Getting a distribution of seats that reasonably reflects each party’s true voter support is what we should be striving for.

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With FPTP, the main parties get more than their fair share of members, so naturally they support the status quo. Having a voting system that makes two-thirds of votes meaningless is the surest way of discouraging voter turnout.

S.I. Petersen

Nanaimo