Three voting systems were proposed for use in BC in the 2018 referendum – these were:  Rural Urban Proportional, Mixed Member Proportional, and Dual Member Proportional.

All three would have ensured the following:

  • Seats in the legislature would closely reflect how voters vote in each region of BC
  • Voters would be able to vote for individual candidates
  • The number of MLAs in each region would not be reduced

Videos from Elections BC

Elections BC published some short videos (about 2 min each) showing how each system works – check them out to get a quick sense of what was on offer in that referendum:

Rural Urban:

Note: the version of Rural Urban Proportional put forward by the NDP government differs from the version we and Fair Vote Canada had originally developed and advocated. In the BC NDP version, more rural ridings would use Mixed Member Proportional, while more urban ones would use the Single Transferable Voting system recommended by the BC Citizen’s Assembly. Our approach, which FVBC now calls “Regional Representation”, uses the same system everywhere, while allowing for smaller districts in more rural areas.

Mixed Member:

Note: a concern about this portrayal of mixed member is that it doesn’t describe the version of mixed member that virtually all electoral reform advocates, along with the NDP and Andrew Weaver have described as their preference – i.e., an “open-list” model in which voters get to explicitly vote for the candidates for the regional seats and the ones with the most direct support from voters win. No-one in BC is advocating for the closed-list model portrayed here.

Dual Member:

Dual Member Proportional is a variant on MMP that was originally proposed in PEI. There has been limited advocacy for DMP in BC.

Learn more

Visit the Elections BC website.