B.C. attorney general suggests three electoral reform choices
NDP seeking a ‘stacked deck,’ Liberals say
• Voters in British Columbia should be able choose between three forms of proportional representation or keep the current voting system in a referendum this fall, Attorney General David Eby said Thursday.
Eby has made 18 recommendations to cabinet on the structure of the referendum, suggesting that voters be asked whether they want to switch to proportional representation to elect members of the legislature or keep the first-past-the-post system.
Voters would also be given three options for proportional representation and be asked to rank them based on their preference.
If a majority support making the switch, the option with the highest number of votes would be implemented.
The campaign period starts July 1, with voting by mail-in ballot running from Oct. 22 to Nov. 30.
Eby said voters should be allowed to answer either or
both questions.
“Voters may rank one, two or all three systems or no systems at all, according to their preference,” he told a news conference. “This freedom allows everybody to participate equally.”
The questions were released after a period of public consultation that included more than 180,000 visits to a government website.
In first-past-the-post systems, the candidate who wins the highest number of votes in every riding wins the right to represent that particular seat in the legislature.
The three proportional representation systems that are on the ballot vary: one allows voters to elect one candidate in each riding directly with a second seat allocated based on provincewide results; another is intended to balance the needs of rural and urban ridings using a mix of first-past-the-post and the single transferable vote where candidates are ranked by preference.
“The final decision on this is British Columbians’,” said Eby. “I have every confidence in the people of B.C. to make their own decision about how to send people to this place.”
B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson said the NDP want voters to support
a complicated new electoral system that will ensure oneparty majority governments become rare if not extinct in the province.
“You can choose the NDP’s alphabet soup, their stacked deck and their rigged game they set up to please the Green party, or you can choose what we’ve had for 150 years and has worked really well as a solid parliamentary democracy,” he said.
The province’s minority NDP government and the Greens have supported proportional representation to determine the number of seats each party gets in the legislature based on its percentage of the popular vote.
Sonia Furstenau, a Green party member of the legislature, said the current system doesn’t reflect voters’ desires.
“First past the post has served the Liberal party, and before them, the Social Credit party, very well in that they often were the party that, with less than 40 per cent of the vote, had 100 per cent of the power in the legislature.”
Furstenau said the Greens aren’t promoting any particular system of proportional representation among the three choices.
“When we look at the engagement of young people, particularly around issues that really will matter to
them in the long term, climate change and democracy, there is a huge appetite to see a modernization of our system,” she said.
Two previous electoral referendums have failed in B.C.
Last year, Premier John Horgan said the province’s current system is unfair because in the last five B.C. elections only one political party formed a government after receiving more than 50 per cent of the votes. In the other elections, parties with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote were able to
form a government.
Last year’s election saw the Liberals and NDP each receive slightly more than 40 per cent of the vote. But the New Democrats eventually formed a minority government with the support of the Greens, who won three seats and took almost 17 per cent of the popular vote.
If voters choose to change systems, proportional representation would be implemented in time for the next fixed-date election in 2021.
If that happens, Eby recommends that a second referendum
be held after two provincial general elections to determine whether to keep proportional representation.
Furstenau said a similar approach was used in other countries that adopted a system of proportional representation, but no countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including Germany, Scotland and New Zealand, have switched back to first past the post.