BC: Should Every Vote Count?

The provincial election was called today in British Columbia. Alongside with the election, the citizens of the province will also be debating if they should change their electoral system from Single Member Plurality to Single Transferable Vote (STV). The vote for both the election and the referendum is to be held on May 12th.

The Citizens’ Assembly was 160 ordinary voters that took on an extraordinary task. Our electoral system was broken, and politicians knew they couldn’t fix it themselves. The legislature voted unanimously to turn the task over to an independent Citizens’ Assembly. Drawn randomly from the voters list, there was a man and a woman from every constituency. These committed citizens spent 11 months learning, researching and listening to the people of BC. People around the world watched this remarkable exercise in democracy with excitement. It succeeded beyond all expectation, with 95% of members reaching the consensus that BC-STV would be best for BC.

"British Columbians are getting this opportunity that almost no citizens in democratic societies get to fundamentally reshape their democracy," Pilon said. "So this kind of discussion should be deep and extensive and try to get at what do people want.

"But, of course, what's happening is typical politics. The No side, which is a bunch of party hacks [and] party elites, are just desperate to save the current system and they're just spreading ... disinformation."

..."Most academics understand our system is broken, it doesn't produce results for people," said Hallsor, a Victoria lawyer well known in federal and provincial political circles. "It's a relic of medieval society that we've simply inherited over the years. We've changed almost everything else since the 1600s. It might be time to look at changing the voting system."

Every eight years, the British Columbia Electoral Boundaries Commission proposes new district boundaries that reflect the changing population of British Columbia. This year, they proposed two sets of boundaries, one according the the current Single Member Plurality system, and one under the Single Transferable Vote system proposed by the Citizens' Assembly for Electoral Reform. In the next election you will decide which of these systems you prefer.