May 19, 2005

Where to Go with Electoral Reform

If the pollsters are correct, understanding a question is not necessary in order to answer it. Of those who voted in Tuesday's general election 97% also voted in the referendum. According to a poll taken by the Mustel Group between May 5th and 9th, only 29% of eligible voters said they knew enough about the proposed BC-STV electoral system to make an informed decision, and 35% said they were not aware of STV. Ipsos-Reid found similar results in their poll, conducted between May 8th and 10th. It is possible, although very unlikely, that two out of three voters educated themselves about STV in the final week before the vote. Alternatively, the vote might be interpreted as a call for change, as a vote of confidence in what Citizens' Assembly, or as support for the process.

BC's grand experiment in electoral reform and grass roots democracy has spawned a problem for Gordon Campbell's new government. More people voted yes to the referendum than voted for the Liberals. 57% voted yes to the question"Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform" while only 46% voted for the Campbell Liberals. Fair Voting BC director Nick Loenen is already calling on Campbell to relax the 60% rule and go ahead with the implementation of STV. It is more likely that some sort of process will be established to determine where to go from here. Perhaps members of the Citizens' Assembly will be asked to reconvene. The obvious course is to put another question before the voters, maybe on a different proportional voting system like that used in Germany or New Zealand. Decisions would have to be made about what the question should be, when another vote should be held and what the threshold should be for adoption.

Both sides in the discussion on electoral reform would probably agree that the Campbell government dropped the ball by funding the Citizens' Assembly up to December 2004 when it submitted its final report, but not completing the process with properly funded "yes" and "no" committees that would have engaged the public and reduced the shocking number of voters who said they knew little or nothing about STV, but nevertheless voted.