The three voting systems that were proposed for use in BC in the 2018 referendum were:  Dual Member, Mixed Member, and Rural Urban Proportional.

Guarantees: 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 decrease

Videos from Elections BC

Elections BC has published some generally very good videos (about 2 min each) showing how each system works:

Dual Member:

Mixed Member:

Note: our one 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., one 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.  Since two of the three parties have explicitly supported this, and the Liberal Party has said they don’t support the version portrayed in the Elections BC video, we are confident that, if voters support mixed member, BC would adopt the so-called “open list” model in which the candidates with the most votes win the regional seats.

Rural Urban:

Learn more

Visit the Elections BC website.