Editor:
It's not really surprising that many of our politicians tell us proportional representation (PR) is bad and our current system of first past the post (FPTP) is good. Until the last provincial election, we had essentially a string of dictatorships, one party in power with no real opposition to anything it proposed.
To understand PR I would suggest you check a YouTube video made by John Cleese in 1987. It's both informative and simple to understand.
Essentially, PR counts up the votes cast for every party and allocates seats in the provincial legislature based on those votes.
In the last election with FPTP, the Liberals won 43 seats (out of 87) with 40.37 per cent of the popular vote. Under PR, they would have won approximately 36 seats. The NDP won 41 seats with 40.26 per cent of the popular vote, however under PR they would also have had approximately 36 seats. The Greens won three seats with 16.84 per cent of the popular vote while under PR they would have been awarded approximately 15 seats.
Small parties are only awarded seats when they get a minimum number of votes cast for them.
When you get away from dictatorships, you also get away from swings in political leadership from one extreme to another and that in turn encourages more debate and the compromise required to hold it all together, something our current politicians are not used to and certainly fear.
Being a dictator is easy. Democracy is hard, but that's why we pay them the big bucks.
Gavin Wishart
