Our current voting system (known as First Past the Post - FPTP) violates all the rules we learned in kindergarten; it is:

Unfair

What else could you call a voting system that

• gives a party a majority government when it wins under 40% of the vote?
  • The NDP won 39 of 75 seats in 1999 with only 39% of the vote
• lets the party that came second in the popular vote govern as a majority?
  • In the 1999 election, the Liberals actually won 42% of the vote
• forces you to lie because of vote-splitting?
  • If two candidates are close on the political spectrum (eg, the Liberals and independent Vicki Huntington in Delta South in 2005, or the NDP and the Greens), you can't vote for favourite candidate without risking the candidate from the opposite end of the spectrum 'coming up the middle'
• assigns seats grossly out of proportion to the vote won?
  • In 2001, the Liberals won 77 of 79 seats on less than 58% of the vote. They refused even to grant the NDP official opposition status.

Unrepresentative

• Even in BC, where there usually are only two parties that win representation, only half the winners won their seats with more than 50% support (as little as 37% was needed).
• Over half the voters are represented by an MLA from a party they didn't vote for.
• Smaller parties like the Green Pary and the Democratic Reform Party, among others (including independents), won no representation at all despite taking 13% of the vote - that's one in eight voters!

Unresponsive

• If you live in a 'safe' riding (one that your MLA won by a substantial margin), the governing party is unlikely to devote many resources to seeking your vote - they'll simply count on it. The opposition party will often put up a straw candidate because they know they can't win.
• The only ridings that the parties pay attention to during a campaign are the dozen or so 'swing' ridings where the Liberals and NDP are close to each other; the other 60+ ridings don't affect the outcome.
• If you are one of the 50% of voters represented by someone other than the person you voted for, good luck trying to get your MLA to take your side on an issue. They may help you with your passport, but don't expect them to argue for policies that you favour.

Unstable

• This happens more often at the federal level where there are at least three parties routinely winning seats, but when an election produces a minority government (one where no party has 50% of the seats), the government tends to only last a short time. This is because the governing party typically wants to trigger an election when their fortunes rise so that they can win a false majority government and not have to take account of opposition views any longer.

Confrontational

• The public sees politicians continually trying to score points off each other because our voting system is adversarial - if one person loses, the other wins. This produces attack ads and yelling matches in the legislature. Politicians behave in ways that kindergarten teachers would never permit.