Referendum complaints already against Liberals, Tyabji

Any day now — as long as your local letter-carrier isn’t on strike — a referendum ballot will show up in your mailbox.

The time has come to vote on the future of B.C.’s electoral system. The question: Do you want to keep the existing firstpast-the-post system for electing provincial politicians? Or do you want to switch to a system of proportional representation?

Based on earlier mail-in referendums, it’s expected about half of eligible B.C. voters will bother to fill out the ballots and mail them back by Nov. 30. That’s a pretty pathetic participation rate when you consider the province’s entire system of democracy hangs in the balance.

I encourage you to get informed on this referendum and participate.

But be warned: This thing could get downright ugly.

On Monday, Elections B.C. was kept busy mailing out the first batch of referendum ballots. But they were also dealing with complaints about referendum wrongdoing and rule-breaking.

Vote PR B.C., the official group supporting pro-rep in the referendum, accused the B.C. Liberal party of misconduct.

The group alleged the Liberal caucus at the legislature set up a taxpayer-financed website to oppose proportional representation that linked to an outside Liberal party website. The Vote PR group said the Liberals appeared to be breaking referendum campaign financing and advertising rules, something the Liberals denied.

A separate complaint, meanwhile, was lodged against former Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji, who posted on Facebook that she was starting a “ballot collection effort” in her hometown of Powell River. Tyabji said she wanted to “acquire a stack” of referendum ballots for a video to demonstrate how easy it will be to defraud the process.

The post triggered complaints of ballot-tampering, triggering an Elections B.C. investigation, but Tyabji said she is just trying to prove a point.

“I’ve talked to lots of people who don’t know this referendum is even happening,” she said. “How many of these ballot packages are going to get tossed into recycling bins? What’s to prevent people from just picking them up? The system is wide-open to abuse.”

Tyabji denied she was doing anything wrong, adding that if she does obtain any recycled, or discarded, ballots she is just going to film them for a video, not mail them in to be counted.

I’m not sure Elections B.C. will see it that way.

These complaints on Day 1 of the voting period don’t bode well. My advice: Watch out for flying mud. And when you get your referendum ballot in the mail, don’t recycle it. Get informed and vote instead.