POWELL RIVER, B.C- Residents of the Powell River-Sunshine Coast riding wanted to change our voting system.
That’s according to the results of the province’s mail-in referendum on proportional representation, which were announced this afternoon.
The first question on the referendum was whether voters would like to change from our current first past the post system, and the second was a ranking of what system voters would like to change to.
In Powell River-Sunshine Coast, 9,242 people voted in favour of first past the post. 10,799 were in favour of a change. A total of 20,041 people voted, with 186 invalid votes.
Voters were also asked to rank Dual Member Proportional (DMP), Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), and Rural-Urban Proportional (RUP), which required two counts.
In Powell River-Sunshine Coast, DMP had 3217 votes, MMP had 5376 and RUP had 4916. 6718 votes were invalid.
In the second count the votes from RUP, the least favourite, were transferred to voters second choice.
In that, the results were MMP with 8450 and DMP with 3988. 1071 ballots were exhausted.
Provincially, 61.3% of participants voted to keep the current first past the post system and 38.7% were looking for a change.
1,402,358 packages, representing 42.6% of registered voters in the province, were returned. Of those, 1,391,423 ballots were valid.
