Elections BC has received fewer than 25 per cent of ballot packages from registered B.C. voters in a referendum that — if successful — would profoundly change the way the provincial government is elected. The B.C. Green Party and NDP are supporting a “proportional representation” system in which MLAs would be chosen by party affiliation proportional to their province-wide popular vote. (Richard McGuire photo)
UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect returned voting packages as of Tuesday, Nov. 20.
A new voting system could be imposed on British Columbians with only a small minority casting their ballots unless there is a large influx of votes in the coming days.
Nov. 30 is the deadline by which ballots must be received by Elections BC in order to be counted.
But as of Tuesday, Nov. 20 – less than two weeks before the deadline – only about 24 per cent of the voting packages had been returned. That’s a jump from last Friday when only 18 per cent of voting packages were returned.
Nonetheless, the return rate in Boundary-Similkameen is higher than in most of the province’s electoral districts.
The referendum was called by the B.C. NDP government to fulfill an agreement reached with the B.C. Green Party in which the three Green MLAs allow the NDP to govern with a minority by supporting them on confidence and supply votes.
The two parties are seeking to replace the current electoral system where the candidate with the most votes in each electoral district becomes the MLA.
They would replace it with one of three “proportional representation” systems in which MLAs would represent political parties in proportion to the parties’ province-wide popular vote.
Elections BC released an “interim ballot package return report” Tuesday indicating that an estimated 779,200 packages have been received by Elections BC from across the province.
The report also provides a tally of returned ballot packages that have now been screened by Elections BC along with a breakdown of returned and screened packages by electoral district.
Province-wide, a total of 377,092 ballot packages have been screened, representing just 11.4 per cent of the estimated 3,295,023 registered voters. The number of registered voters could increase if more voters register and request a package before the Friday, Nov. 23 deadline.
Boundary-Similkameen, the electoral district that includes Osoyoos and Oliver, has a higher rate of return than most electoral districts.
As of Tuesday, 7,030 screened packages had been returned from Boundary-Similkameen, representing 19.9 per cent of the 35,390 registered voters.
Only Parksville-Qualicum with 21.3 per cent and Courtenay-Comox with 20.4 per cent have higher return rates.
The districts with higher return rates tend to be rural, while districts with low return rates tend to be urban.
The lowest rate of return is in Surrey-Green Timbers where only 1,117 ballot packages have been screened by Elections BC, representing just 4 per cent of the 28,192 registered voters.
Because urban electoral districts tend to have larger populations than rural districts, a system of representation by province-wide popular vote will increase the weight of urban representation at the expense of rural areas.
The figures cited in the Elections BC report do not include packages currently in the postal system that have not yet been received by Elections BC.
The referendum can be won with a simple majority and there is no minimum threshold for the number of votes that must be received.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
Not surprised the rural regions have the greatest return rates seeing as they have the most to lose under PR. It’s probably also safe to say the majority of those responses are a hard no.
By the sounds of it most ballots wound up in the garbage or recycle bin. I just hope it was the latter since that might appease our friends in the Green Party who were responsible for forcing this nonsense upon us in the first place.
This is truly pathetic. A system being pushed by those who feel shorted because the present system can result in a party with less than 50% majority can attain power could very well be approved by such a pathetic voter turn out. But the PR supporters will gladly accept the results even though a very small % of the population voted. It’s a simple form, cast your vote so we can see how the majority of voters want to vote in the future.