Good evening. Welcome to Nova Scotia. Thanks for coming here.
My name is Daniel Sokolov, and I've been an election officer many times, for the last three elections as a deputy returning officer. I wanted to offer you something from the front lines. I was not high ranking; I was actually dealing with all the voters.
I think that proportional representation is the way to go. But whatever way you go, keep it simple.
I heard the gentleman before talking about other voting systems in which you rank candidates. My experience from the front line is that for certain segments of the electorate, doing that would be too complicated. For people who are educated or for people who have studied election systems for a while, the meaning of simple may be very different. I don't mean any disrespect to anyone, but it is amazing what you encounter at the polls; and those are the people who actually want to come, who take the effort to put on clothes and go out and make a public statement, “Here I am. I want to vote”.