Small-town B.C.'s odds of helping elect outgoing Premier Gordon Campbell's successor got much better Saturday.
B.C. Liberal Party delegates voted overwhelmingly -- 98 per cent -- to change the voting system the party uses later this month to elect a new leader and premier.
Delegates voted 1,319 to 23 in favour of moving to a weighted ballot at the Feb. 26 leadership convention, replacing the party's one-member, one-vote system.
Six candidates, including five former Liberal cabinet ministers George Abbott, Kevin Falcon, Mike de Jong and Moira Stilwell and former Parksville mayor Ed Mayne, are running to replace Campbell, who announced last November he was stepping down after three terms as premier.
The six leadership candidates all endorsed the move to the weighted ballot, which required a two-thirds majority to pass.
But prior to the vote there were rumblings the weighted ballot may not benefit the Vancouver-area candidates who signed up tens of thousands of new party members.
Clark, Falcon and de Jong each signed up more than 10,000 candidates each, helping increase the party's membership to 90,000 from the 36,000 members at the start of the leadership campaign.
Under the weighted-ballot-vote, each of the province's 85 ridings will be given 100 points even though the urban Vancouver-Quilchena riding has thousands more people and Liberal members than northwest B.C.'s Skeena riding.
But the one-member, one-vote system, used to elect Campbell party leader in 1993, was viewed by the party brass and others from rural and remote areas of the province as a numbers game that favours candidates from heavily populated areas.
With the weighted ballot, voters mark their ballot once, but choose their preferences in descending order of the six candidates.
The first candidate to receive more than 50 per cent of the provincewide votes is declared the winner, but it could take several rounds of vote counting.
If a winner is not decided after the first count, the candidate who received the least amount of votes is eliminated, but that candidate's second choice votes goes to the second choice candidate if that person stays in the race. Subsequent votes are to be counted in that fashion until a winner is declared.
Abbott, from the tiny B.C. Interior resort and farming community of Sicamous, said the support of the weighted vote ensures rural votes count as much as the votes from the Vancouver area.
Abbott, who has portrayed himself as a rural-friendly candidate, said the weighted ballot vote helps his bid to win the party leadership.
Pundits have said previously that Abbott is in position to challenge as a second-choice compromise candidate behind perceived frontrunners Clark and Falcon, who both hail from the Vancouver area.
"We've been basing our campaign on the premise that this will pass," said Abbott. "It's pretty clear that when you have a system that identifies the importance of every region, as the new method does, it certainly strengthens for somebody from rural B.C. their opportunity to potentially win a leadership vote."
Former B.C. Liberal MLA Gulzar Cheema spoke against the weighted ballot, saying it devalues the votes of Liberals who live in heavily populated areas. Cheema lives in the heavily populated suburban Vancouver city of Surrey.
Clark said the move to the weighted ballot sends a message to all British Columbians that the Liberals are electing a leader who enjoys the support of the entire province.
"There's a practical reason to make sure our leader represents the entire province, but there's a principle at stake, and the premier should represent every region of the province," she said. "You can"t govern well if all you care about, and the only people who you represent are in the Lower Mainland and south (Vancouver) Island."
