Here we go again.
B.C. will once again ask its citizens if they want to change the electoral system. The B.C. NDP announced on Wednesday that British Columbians will be asked if they would like to move to a system of proportional representation. This will be the third time in 12 years that we will have been asked if we want to scrap first-past-the-post system in favour of something new.
In 2005, when the Liberals, under Gordon Campbell, asked this question, 57 per cent of British Columbians voted in favour of BC-STV. So one may wonder, if 57 per cent of the people voted for the change, why a) we don't already have a new system and b) why are we voting a third time.
The answer is that the government of the day set a 60 per cent threshold for passing the referendum. One can argue that a referendum vote in favour of a significant change requires more than 50 per cent plus one to be successful but 57 per cent was significantly over that threshold. In many ways, of course, the 57 per cent vote did make it difficult for the government to ignore. Thus, in 2009, British Columbians were asked to vote again on the new system.
Dennis Pilon, one of Canada's foremost scholars on democratic and electoral reform, wrote an academic article to explain the litany of problems that unfolded in both the 2005 and the 2008 referenda.
The article is easy to read. It is entitled: "The 2005 and 2009 Referenda on Voting System Change in British Columbia" and is available by just Googling the author's name and the article title but I will summarize the key issues here.
The referendum in 2005 was shaped by an important democratic process called the Citizens' Assembly (CA): "The Assembly was an independent, non-partisan assembly of 160 randomly selected British Columbians, with a mandate to look at how votes cast in provincial elections translate into seats in the Legislature."
This group of 160 people took the time to learn about the pros and cons of different types of electoral systems and deliberated on the best outcome for B.C. voters to "make every vote count."
At the end of the process they chose a system called BC-STV (the Single Transferable Vote). British Columbian's were then asked in the referendum if they would like to change from First-Past-the-Post to BC-STV.
Pilon points out that in the post-referendum analysis there were a number of interesting findings.
First, pundits who were not in favour of the change pointed to the low voter turnout and cited the facts that many people were a) unaware of the referendum and b) were often not clear about the way that STV works. Yet later academic analysis showed that, those people who had a limited understanding of the system, voted in favour because they trusted the BC-CA.
In other words, this body of people who had taken the time to learn and assess different electoral systems had become democratic surrogates in place of educating every individual voter. This process was lauded as an important democratic tool.
It is also important to note, as Pilon does, that during the 2005 campaign, the government was mostly silent on their preferences for the outcome but, one could argue that Elections BC had really missed an excellent opportunity to engage in broader public education on electoral reform.
By 2009, the referendum process for electoral reform took on a much more political tone. As Pilon explains, the government decided to fund "two sides of the debate" and what emerged was a very strong "no" campaign and weaker "yes" campaign. The issue, however, was that public understanding about electoral issues and the specifics of BC-STV remained relatively low.
There is a great deal more to discuss about the details of the two referenda that took place in 2005 and 2009 but my point today is that, as we head into a third public discussion and a new referendum about electoral reform we must learn from the past.
Two major points emerge: first, the Citizens' Assembly was shown to be a trusted model for identifying a workable and fair electoral system; and second, governments should not fund "sides of the debate" but rather fund significant public education sessions about how a new system works and why an Assembly (or any other body chosen to pick the system) chose that system over others.
