No matter who wins the election on Saturday, it won't be Burnaby voters, according to resident David Huntley.
Huntley, who is part of a group called Burnaby/New Westminster Citizens for Voting Equality, would like to see a voting system in place that more accurately reflects the voting patterns of residents.
"Give voters what they want and vote for," he said in a phone interview Monday.
He believes the municipality should switch to a preferential or proportional voting system, such as the single transferable vote (STV) system, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, instead of the current one-vote-per-candidate system.
Huntley pointed to the 2008 municipal election results, with Mayor Derek Corrigan winning with 66.8 per cent of the votes and the entire Burnaby Citizens Association slate winning all of the council seats with only 51.3 per cent of the votes.
Corrigan said at a recent all-candidates meeting that he would not support a proportional voting system as it is too complicated for voters.
"The politicians in power will never change the voting system that got them elected unless they see some particular advantage for them," Huntley said.
Corrigan mentioned the results of the 2009 provincial STV referendum were against the shift to a proportional system.
STV needed 60 per cent of the votes provincewide, and at least 51 of the 85 electoral districts needed to have more than 50 per cent of votes in favour, for it to pass.
But in 2009, B.C. STV took nearly 39 per cent of the vote provincially, and only a handful of ridings surpassed the 50 per cent mark individually.
The provincial government would not support a change to a proportional voting system, Corrigan added.
But he said he would consider a ward system if the province indicated it was willing to consider it.
A ward system would divide the city into wards with a number of city councillors specifically representing each section of the city.
Burnaby Municipal Green candidate Rick McGowan is a proponent of proportional voting systems and wrote to the NOW in favour of a provincial STV in 2009.
Regarding Corrigan's comment on the complexity of the voting system, McGowan said, "My cellphone's complicated, but I still use it."
McGowan also told Huntley's citizens' group that he would consider a ward system.
TEAM Burnaby council candidate Ray Power indicated at a recent all-candidates meeting that the party would support a ward system, as well.
However, Huntley said he was doubtful that a ward system would provide more balanced results in a municipal election, as the current councillors are from various areas of the city.
Low voter turnout is a bigger issue than the voting system, mayoral candidate Sylvia Gung said at a recent meeting.
The voter turnout in Burnaby's 2008 election was 23.49 per cent.
Though various studies have been done on what effect proportional voting might have on voter turnout, Huntley said the results have been unclear.
"I don't think you can expect a big effect if we have a better system," he said. "It would be nice if there was some."
Despite the interest in a proportional system from Green candidates, Huntley isn't expecting any changes after the election, he said.
"It would be nice to be optimistic, but I'm not really," he said, adding that people need to educate themselves about the different systems and make themselves heard on the issue.
