Editor:
For the umpteenth time, drum roll please, this entire mess could easily have been avoided. If we had a democratic electoral system, i.e. proportional representation, this would not have happened.
The First Past the Post system, winners of ridings separated by less than 100 votes, does not work, never has. In the FPT system, those electors who did not vote for the winning candidate, their votes fall under the table, lost.
In a proportional representation system, widely used around the world, the party that gets most of the popular votes, forms the government. If they have the largest faction, but not a majority in the House, they need to find a coalition partner. That is the best situation, because both sides need to smooth over their “rough edges” to coalesce. Negotiation, the heart of politics and democracy.
And now we “have to look forward to the same mess in the coming federal election.”
Our provincial and federal political malaise is largely self-inflicted by our undemocratic system of electing our representatives. We should not have a system where a party that garners 35 per cent of the popular vote gets 100 per cent of the power in parliament.
Klaus Blume, Gibsons
