G — Wednesday, October 16, 1991 — North Shore News

ay hay ae. Set

OK MIKEY, HERES TODAYS SCHEDULE.

73010 9AM, YOULL VISIT A SeHOOL AND SLAM THE. SOCREDS INTEGRITY...

310 4:15 PM, GN A FARM

ABOUT To BECOME CONDOS. 15

POINT OUT LACK OF SOCRED Oni

12 NOON TO 1:30 Pt. VISIT A HOSPITAL, BLAST SOCRED

0- (1:30 BM. A CLARCUT FOREST, WHERE YOU SkEWER THe SOCAEDS ON ETHICS...

AND FINALY. 545 10 5:17, A PRESS CONFERENCE. UKERE YOULL DISCUSS IN DEPTH THE

P PIATFOAI

NEWS VIEWPOINT

A vote for democracy

HE MUD"’S been slung, the accusa-

tions, evyasions, side-steps and

quick-steps have been the fly-ash in the public eye for the past month.

The time has come to sift through it all, make sense of it what yon can and make ‘decision... ° .. On the North Skore, there are 19 can- didates from five different political parties ranning for four avaiiable seats in the provincial legislature.

“There are also two referendum questions dealing with the public right tc MLA recall “apd to propose initiatives through referen-

/ dums. vote.

Election 1991 for B.C. will perhaps be the most important provincial election the province has seen for the past 20 years.

It is incumbent then upon residents from all over the North Shore and the rest of the province to cast a ballot.

These soured on polis, debates, pundits and politicos must now filter out the rhetoric, focus on the issues and the can- didates and make an educated choice.

The democratic process may seem un- wieldy and inefficient, but the alternative is not worth considering.

To make democracy work is simple:

LETTER OF THE DAY

- Volunteer assistance was requested

voters who had been missed in the enumeration. These forms were filled in with nares and addresses

Dear Editor: I was surprised to read the complaint by NDP candidate

David Schreck that Social Credit _ workers have been . assisting in enumerating voters for the elec- -toral rolis, and by the response of the B.C. Chief Electoral Officer, Robert Patterson.

‘In early 1990 standard forms - from Elections B.C. were sent to political parties and other large organizations with a request that they assist in the registration of

Speck . .Timothy Renshaw i Noel Wright

North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and quatified under Schedule 111, Paragraph ti of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday vy North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to every door on ihe North Shore.

Class Mail Registration Number 3885, Subscriptions Nosth and West Vancouver, $25 per year. Mailing sates avalatie on request.

Submissions are welcome bul we cannot accept ibitity for unsolicitad material including manusenpts and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed envelope.

of persons who were uncertain of their voting status and sent to the registrar by mail or by fax.

My own organization sent in many of these forms and were in- strumental, [£ hope, in getting many voters registered regardless of their political views. The staff at Elections B.C. appeared to be quite happy to have us do this work for them.

Display Advertising 980-0511 Reat Estate Advertising 885-6982 Classified Advertising 986-6222

Distribution Subscriptions Fax

Perhaps if Mr. Robert Patter- son asks them nicely, his staff will tell him all about the program, and the amount of work that vol- unteer organizations have done to help him.

All Social Credit workers are aware of, and most of them carry, the prescribed forms supplied by Elections B.C. for this purpose.

Ernest W. Sarsfield North Vanccuver

986-1337 986-1337 985-3227

North Shore managed

Administration 985-2131

SUNDAY = WEDeereDA' 1139 Lonsdale Avenue,

North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4

MEMBER

SDA DIVISION

61,982 (average circulation, Wednesday. Friday & Sunday)

Entire contents © 1991 North Shore Free Press Lid. All rights reserved.

Free enterprise voters need to forget the past

TOMORROW EN the polling booth the issues for B.C. voters boil dows to the fundamental philosophy of gov- ernment they support and the raw numbers working tor 9 or

against that philosophy.

if you believe in socialism, the philosophy part is simple. You vote NDP — period. Up to our Tuesday deadline the polls had that party leading, backed by 38% of decided voters.

Second and third respectively came the rejuvenated Liberals with 30% and the punch-drunk Socreds with 29%. So on the basis of the popular vote, support for the two free enterprise parties still outweighed support for the NDP by 21 percentage points (59% to 38%).

Alas, our majority-vote system by ridings makes these figures largely meaningless. The party topping the popular vote is vir- tually certain to win the most seats. But runners-up win propor- tionately far FEWER seats than their popular vote standings would suggest.

In 1986, for example, the Socreds won 1.4% of the Legislature seats for every 1% of their popular vote (49.6% PV for 48 of the 69 seats). But the NDP took only 0.71% of the seats for every 1% of THEIR popular vote (42.3% PV for a mere 21 seats).

The lower your popular vote, the worse it gets, If the 1986 Lib- erals (6.7% PV) had matched the NDP performance, they'd have won four cr five seats. In the event they won none, Analysis of other provincial and federal elec- tion results confirms this princi-

le. Using roughly the above for- mula — and assuming the 14% undecided vote splits evenly be- tween the three parties — today’s popular vote figures therefore suggest something like the follow- ing seats in the enlarged 75-seat

BRIG. GEN. sTUART ™ MCDONALD... boss reservist.

JOHN GARY... music of the movies celebrated.

Noel Wright

HITHER AND YON

Legislature: NDP 42, Liberals 18, Socreds 15.

So what do poor free enterprise voters do tomorrow? In terms of | seats the NDP stands poised to form the government end domi- - nate the Legisiature with an ab- solute majority of at least aine or 10. Yet province-wide the former outnumber the socialists by three to two.

Statistically, their onic hope now is to forget old loyalties, per- sonalities, alleged ‘‘scandals,”” —- Vander Zalm, Rita’s rough man- - . ners and the Liberals’ lack of ex perience. .

They should vote -— with heads, not hearts — for their Liberal OP. Socred who realistivally has the. better chance of taking the ssat,~ Never mind whether or not they LIKE the candidate personally. Winning is what matters. : Second-placers won't save free . enterprise.

Faint as even this hope may be . in some cases, there ARE about — 30 rearginal ridings where the result may rest on as few as 500... votes. And on Wright’s ‘ guesstimate only an extra five or six slim Socred or Liberal victories: are needed to rob the NDP ofa ~ majority in the House and pave the way for an eventual an- — ti-socialist coalition. :

Tomorrow’s the day for free enterprisers to live in the future, not the past.

eee.

IN HAPPIER VEIN, congrats to- Bri adie:-General Stuart

mald, North Van teacher and former commander of the B.C. Militia, on his new appoint- ment as Chief of Staff (Reserves) at Mobile Command HQ... Movie historian, stage and screen star John Gary and Company open North Shore Community Concerts’ {991-92 season at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Centennial Theatre with ‘Lights, Camera, Action!’’ — a celebration of the music of the silver screen ... From the Better Late Dept. many happy returns Monday, Oct. 14, to West Van’s Joan Greenwood ... And today, Oct. 16, warm 60th anni- versary greetings to North Van’s Bill and Alice Swanson.

WRIGHT OR WRONG: No point in crying over spilled milk — it only makes it salty for the cat.

LNA Ne SS ale atety!