PG, BC votes down electoral reform

The votes are in and proportional representation is out.

Chief Electoral Officer, Anton Boegman presented the outcome of the recent referendum on electoral reform this afternoon. 1,402,358 packages, representing 42.6% of registered voters in the province, were returned. Of those, 1,391,423 ballots were valid.

In the Prince George-Mackenzie riding, 71.3% of registered voters who returned their packages voted for FPTP. The Prince George-Valemount riding saw 70.87% choose the existing system.

Voters were asked to rank Dual Member Proportional (DMP), Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), and Rural-Urban Proportional (RUP). The first question on the referendum was whether voters would like to change from our current system, and the second was a ranking of what system voters would like to change to.  

For question one, 61.3% voted to keep the current first past the post system and 38.7% were looking for a change.  

Question two required two counts; in the first, DMP won 29.45%, MMP came in highest at 41.24% and RUP ranked lowest at 29.31%.

In the second count the votes from RUP, the least favourite, were transferred to voters second choice. In that, the results were MMT 53.05%  and DMP 46.95.

Results by electoral district are available on the Elections BC website through this link