THE 411 ON ELECTORAL REFORM
NDP releases referendum details
VICTORIA British Columbians will have three options to change how they elect provincial politicians in a November referendum, including two voting systems that have never been used and a third that was rejected by the province’s citizens’ assemblies.
Premier John Horgan’s government unveiled the options and rules for the Nov. 30 referendum on Wednesday, setting the stage for months of debate between advocates and opponents of changing our current first-past-the-post system that elects the candidate with the most votes in 87 B.C. ridings.
Horgan described B.C.’s current system as “rigged on behalf of the other side” in reference to the many elections previously won by the B.C. Liberals. “For years and years and years it has provided absolute power to the people who get the minority of the votes,” he said.
The NDP is proposing three alternatives:
Dual Member Proportional, ■ which would involve large twoMLA districts where one politician is elected based on the most votes and the other by their party ’s province-wide performance.
Mixed Member Proportional, ■ where 60 per cent of the province’s MLAs would be elected by most votes and 40 per cent by lists set by political parties.
Rural-Urban Proportional representation, ■ a mash-up between MMP for rural ridings and the single transferable vote system twice rejected in previous B.C. referendums for urban ridings.
Two of the proposals, dual member and rural-urban proportional representation, have never been used by other countries or provinces. Variants of MMP are used by Germany and New Zealand, though B.C.’s independent citizen’s assembly viewed the system as the wrong fit for B.C. in the previous 2005 and 2009 referendums. This new version of B.C. MMP is also incomplete, with details on how parties would set lists and whether voters could pick specific candidates to be decided only if and when it passes the referendum.
“This is turning out to be alphabet soup where they are proposing a whole bunch of systems that no one’s ever heard of and it’s an attempt to confuse and manipulate British Columbians from the democracy that we so value,” said Opposition Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson.
He called it a “stacked deck in a rigged game” in which the NDP is trying to appease its power-sharing partners, the B.C. Green Party, which supports proportional representation. The current system “is what we’ve had for 150 years that has worked really well in a solid parliamentary democracy,” said Wilkinson.
The actual referendum will be conducted using a mail-in ballot from Oct. 22 to Nov. 30. It will contain two questions: The first will simply ask if voters want to keep the current first-past-the-post system or switch to proportional representation. The second will offer the three new systems that voters can rank in terms of preference. If the majority vote to keep the current system, there would be no change.
However, if a majority of 50 per cent plus one person vote to switch, there would be a second referendum after two additional elections, which Attorney General David Eby said will provide “an important safeguard” to “ensure British Columbians are comfortable with their choice once they see it in action.”
The proposed changes could cause a dramatic redrawing of the province’s 87 electoral boundaries. But Eby said there’s not enough time to produce maps or detailed descriptions of how the current ridings could change, under a timeline he himself set to have the vote this fall.
Two leading proponent groups emerged in the debate Wednesday. Each could get $500,000 from government to advocate their positions.
Bill Tieleman, of the “No B.C. Proportional Representation Society,” was sharply critical of Eby ’s rules, calling the proposals complicated, extremely divisive and lacking in detail.
“The government can’t tell one voter in B.C. exactly which riding they will be in or how many members will be in that riding, or how many citizens will be in that riding,” said Tieleman. “It’s completely a blank slate. You have to vote yes to find out ... it’s a ludicrous and bizarre way of doing it.”
Maria Dobrinskaya, spokesperson for Vote PR B.C., said government provided enough detail on the proposals. She also said Eby correctly safeguarded the integrity of the process through rules that prevent any region from ending up with fewer MLAs, and by setting Elections B.C. as the neutral source of public information during the referendum.
“Overall we’re excited,” she said. “We’re not going to take a position for any one system, we’ll let voters decide on that.”
Regardless of the new system chosen, Eby said any party that receives fewer than five per cent of the popular vote in an election under proportional representation would not elect an MLA, to avoid the scenario where multiple small parties clog up the legislature and produce complicated coalitions.
The new rules also set limits on advertising by parties for or against changing the system. Corporate and union donations will be banned, said Eby. Advertising sponsors will need to register and face $200,000 spending limits.
This is turning out to be alphabet soup where they are proposing a whole bunch of systems that no one’s ever heard of.