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Campaign signs supporting proportional representation started to appear along Kelowna roadsides Thursday.
Fair Vote Kelowna, an arm of Fair Vote Canada, is behind the signs and they've also started a lawn sign campaign Friday. Cyclists with pro proportional representation signs on their bikes have also been spotted around town.
The mail-in ballot will be held between Oct. 22 and Nov. 30, with voters asked to select one of four options –keep the existing first-past-the-post system or one of three proportional representation models.
The PR options are:
• Dual member proportional, where neighbouring pairs of districts in B.C. would be combined into one two-member constituency, except for the larger rural districts, which would remain unchanged.
• Mixed member proportional, which combines single-member districts with party list candidates, added to give each party the number of seats determined by their share of the province-wide vote in an election.
• Rural-urban proportional representation, with multi-member districts for urban and semi-urban areas, with voters choosing their MLA on a ranked ballot. In rural areas, a mixed-member proportional system using candidate lists chosen by parties would be used.
Voters will not have an official map of the new voting districts when they make their choice. If voters choose to change to a new system, the district boundaries would then be determined by the independent Electoral Boundaries Commission.
Research by the Fraser Institute from 30 countries using proportional representation systems show an average of 4.6 political parties in a parliament versus 2.5 with FPTP. Coalition governments happen 87 per cent of the time in PR systems, but only 23 per cent of elections under FPTP systems. The survey looked at election data from 2000 to 2017.
Critics of the current FPTP system say it isn't fair that a party that gets 40 per cent of the popular vote gets 100 per cent of the power.
The province is currently updating voter registration for the referendum. Voters can register here.
