Dear Editor:
I am writing to answer your question presented in your editorial, What is the secret ingredient for winners? (Our View, Nov. 23).
Well, this is not really a secret. This "ingredient" comes from our "amazing" civic electoral system which allows onesixth of a vote to be counted as one full vote. This is the system which, on one hand, gives each elector six votes (as in New West), and on other hand places such usage restrictions that only some electors can benefit from having multiple votes, and many cannot - which creates an uneven playing field in local elections.
Voters who vote for a "slate" can effectively use all their multiple votes. But voters who support only one candidate, for example, can effectively use only one of their votes, lose the rest of their votes or waste them on random picking.
In addition, slate-voters who benefit from all their votes are more motivated to actually vote than the other voters, which explains the low voter participation.
Is this democratic? What can we do?
Can we convince the provincial government to remove vote usage restrictions so voters may use all their multiple votes among any number of candidates, including giving all votes to one candidate? Will provincial government be interested? Alternatively, the provincial government may prefer to completely democratize our civic election system by changing it to a "one person - one vote" system. Period.
Vladimir (Key) Krasnogor, New Westminster
