Updated: Wed Oct. 10 2007 11:59:08 AM

toronto.ctv.ca

Preliminary results from Wednesday's referendum showed Ontario voters do not want to change the way they elect politicians by way of a proposed mixed member proportional system (MMP).

Projections showed voters rejected the proposal by a margin of almost 2-1, meaning the current First-Past-the-Post system will remain.

At least 60 per cent of voters had to support the MMP plan for the overhaul to take place, and at least 50 per cent of voters in 64 of the 107 ridings were also required to support the proposition for the change to go through.

Approving the MMP system would have given citizens two votes in future elections -- one for the political party of their choice and another for a local candidate. The reform would have been implemented before the 2011 election.

Advocates argued the MMP system would have brought a balance of power in the legislature that better reflects the popular vote.

"What we would get under this proposal is a legislature where the proportion of seats held by parties is more or less exactly reflective of the proportion of the vote for those parties among the public," Political science professor Karen Bird told CTV Newsnet before ballots were cast on Wednesday.

"So what this has going for it is that it is a more accurate way of translating how voters are expressing their opinion into seats."

Other analysts said an MMP system would have taken away the need for "strategic voting." The way the current system works, voters will sometimes vote not for the party or candidate they support -- but for the person that will ensure defeat for the party they don't want to win.

The overhaul would have:

• Increased the number of seats in the legislature to 129 seats -- 90 of those seats filled by local representatives elected by the public and 39 seats filled by list members chosen by the political party to fulfill the need for proportional representation;
• These list members would have been made public by the party before an election under the MMP system; and
• The political party with the most elected local representatives and the most party votes would have been formed the government.

This First-Past-the-Post works like this:

• Ontario is divided into 107 electoral districts. Each voter gets to pick one representative they think should win a seat in the legislature;
• The person with the most votes wins and will represent the riding in government;
• The political party with the most representatives with seats in the legislature forms the government.

Those who opposed MMP argued the system was a step back for democracy.

"There are more politicians, less districts, less contact with citizens," Joseph Angolano, media director of the group No MMP, told CTV.ca recently.

One of his main concerns was that the list members would have been chosen by the party, not the people.

The referendum was the province's first in more than 80 years. The Ontario government commissioned a group, the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, to study the electoral system for months and form the ballot question.

Elections Ontario spent $6.8 million on their public education campaign, including holding hundreds of community presentations, sending out nearly 5 million flyers and advertising in newspapers, radio stations and on websites.

But Elections Ontario was accused of bungling the public awareness campaign, as the agency recently learned that roughly 3 million voters didn't even know there was a referendum question on the ballot, the Canadian Press reported.