N.B. commission recommends lowering voting age, letting some non-citizens vote
Voting at 16 years old. Giving some non-citizens the vote. A preferential ballot.
New Brunswick’s Commission on Electoral Reform issued 24 sweeping recommendations Friday to the way people vote in the province.
One commission member suggested a preferential ballot could be in place by next year’s election, but Premier Brian Gallant said he won’t make major reforms without first putting it to a referendum or seeking a mandate from voters in an election.
Under a preferential ballot, voters choose their favourite candidate and then rank their second, third and further choices.
Those choices would come into play if no one was able to get 51 per cent of the vote on the first ballot.
Commission member Bev Harrison said such a system tends to take some of the nastiness out of elections.
“This is an opportunity for candidates to be more civilized in their approach, because you are trying to get second and third ballot support in case you don’t make it the first time,” he said.
Harrison – a former MLA and speaker of the legislature – said he thinks government could put that change in place for the next provincial election in September 2018 and look at further changes later.
“The preferential ballot is doable in the immediate, and mixed-member proportional – which a lot of New Brunswickers certainly support – is something that would have to be more incremental and tied to the redistribution of seats,” Harrison told a news conference in Fredericton.
But Gallant said such a change would need the approval of voters.
“Any government would have to have a clear mandate from the people of New Brunswick to make that type of change. A mandate could be (sought) through a referendum, and it could be (sought) through a political party’s platform,” Gallant said Friday.
Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs agrees.
“The Official Opposition believes that any changes to our democracy must be decided democratically through a referendum or ballot question. Democratic reform has to be democratic,” he said.
Green Leader David Coon also agrees that major changes need to go to a vote, but adds he doesn’t believe a preferential ballot system is the answer.
“That’s not going to solve the problem that people have with the first-past-the-post system because it will still allow governments to form majorities when they receive a minority of votes,” he said.
Coon, who holds the only third-party seat in the legislature, said he believes a proportional representation voting system will eventually have to be adopted.