BEFORE CHRIST. politicians on the streets to talk about proportional representation

Advocates and opponents of proportional representation took to the streets of Vancouver this weekend to convince voters to participate in a province-wide referendum – but many of the people they spoke to seemed diverted by the options.

Voters in British Columbia will soon choose to retain their current first-past-the-post electoral system or switch to a proportional representation system.

NDP Mount Pleasant MP Melanie Mark on Saturday questioned voters alongside a small group of volunteers extolling the benefits of proportional representation, an electoral system in which parties get seats proportional to the number of seats. votes cast.

"Right now, 40% of the votes can allow a party to get 100% power, which is not the case for British Columbians," Mark said.

"People do not think it's fair, they do not feel that their vote matters," Mark said.

If a majority of people support proportional representation, one of the three systems – that voters will rank in order of preference in a second question on the ballot – will be adopted for any future provincial election.

Elections B.C. earlier this week, you sent ballot papers with options, along with a guide explaining their nature. But many people with whom Mark spoke Saturday said they were not clear on the meaning of the options.

Even Mark seemed to have trouble explaining how one of the three systems would work. When reporters repeatedly asked him to dismantle them, she repeated that the first-past-the-post system was insufficient.

"With all due respect, I do not have all the guide memorized, I just got it," Mark said. "I have a degree in Political Science, but I am not an expert in electoral representation."

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Former NDP strategist Bill Tieleman leads the group at the head of the no camp campaign alongside former BC Liberal MP Suzanne Anton and former BC public servant Bob Plecas.

"It's complicated, it's confusing," Tieleman said. "People do not really know what's going on with that."

Tieleman says proportional representation creates perpetual minority governments and political instability, which is not good for jobs and the economy.

His group also claims that it could hurt voters in rural areas and allow extremist parties to rise with only 5% of the vote – a point raised in a controversial advertisement published earlier this week.

One of Tieleman's main concerns is the lack of information on the operation of one of the three systems, including possible changes to electoral boundaries and the number of elected members.

"All these decisions will come after the referendum, which is exactly the wrong way to change our democratic institutions," he said. "We do not know what would happen.This is a political pandora box."

With Joel Ballard's files