Re: 鈥淒emocracy prevails when PR fails,鈥� letter, Dec. 28.
The writer is correct in his figures and percentages, but illogical and wrong in his conclusions. The Green Party got 16.84 per cent of the popular votes, a significant amount, but got only three seats, about 3.4 per cent of the total under the first-past-the-post voting system. This is not democratic.
Under PR, they would have got about 14 seats, which is representative of the popular vote. The Greens reasonably sided with the NDP rather than the sa国际传媒 Liberals, as their views are closer to NDP than Liberal ones, and presumably their voters鈥� views are, too. This agreement represents a reasonable majority of the total vote at 57.17 per cent.
To call this a perversion of democracy is wrong. The perversion of democracy lies with the FPTP system, not with PR, so the headline is wrong, too.
Charles Simpson
Victoria
