Once again, a federal electoral call was made before Western votes had the opportunity to be considered, letting some voters feel deprived of their rights, as if their votes did not matter.
On Monday night, around 7:15 pm PT, the media, including CBC News, project that the liberals would form the next government.
That was 15 minutes after the surveys had closed in BC, and not long after they closed in Alberta. The electoral call was made by knowing only the first results of the easternmost provinces.
This is not unusual for British Colombians, it certainly has happened before, but for some, it is frustrating.
Two hundred of the country’s currents are in Ontario and Quebec, because that is where a high percentage of the Canadian population lives. Another 32 are located in the Atlantic of Canada, so it is not really surprising to be called federal elections before the Western provinces are counted.
But those early election statements still hurt, said Sherry Boschman of Fort St. James, located about 113 kilometers northwest of Prince George.
“It simply disappoints me.”
Boschman has voted in BC for decades and said he has become accustomed to this and worries that other western voters feel far behind; She said her relatives in Saskatchewan feel in the same way.
“It seems to me that the West really does not count.”
Proportional representation
The electoral reform, something for which Boschman has tried to boost, could be a possible solution for the enigma of BC-No-Conteo, he said.
Sharon Sommerville, spokesman for the National Campaign for Electoral Reform, Vote Justo, said the problem comes from the fact that the winners of the elections are determined by the number of seats that a party wins, not by the total number of votes it receives.
If Canada considered the proportional representation instead of the first -step electoral system that we have now, the percentage of seats that a party has in the legislature would reflect the percentage of people who voted for that party.
“If we had to count the votes, and the matches would get the seats they deserved based on the votes they received, it would mean that all cables would be at stake throughout the country,” said Sommerville.
Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised to advance with the electoral reform in 2015, but abandoned the idea Two years later. After Trudeau announced that he would resign as prime minister, he said it was his greater regret Since his time in office.
Voting times
Changing the Times surveys are open to be aligned throughout the country would allow the votes to be counted at the same time, instead of starting with the east and that the elections are decided before the West even begins to count.
In an email to CBC News, a spokesman for the Canadian elections said that legislation on elections, such as stepped hours of voting throughout the country, is at the height of Parliament.
“Only anecdotally, after having worked during the elections under the previous system, the current approach” levels “the flow of results largely,” they said.
They said that the Chief Electoral Officer will organize a report on the elections and answer questions to the Parliament.
‘Our votes tell’
The political scientist Stewart Persi agreed that, in some way, to obtain the results of the elections so fast in the West is annoying, but he hopes that British Colombians do not feel that their votes do not matter.
For example, he said, once the liberals were projected winners, BC could be the decisive factor on whether it became a minority or a majority government.
“The complete choice is the expression of the country as a whole, and BC is an important part of that,” he said. “But for us it would take a very specific confluence of circumstances to tip the balance at one time or another, although our votes tell.”
