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Submission EMERSON-0093 (Online)

Submission By Peter Emerson, Director, The de Borda Institute
AddressBelfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
OrganizationThe de Borda Institute
Date20040216
CategoryCitizens' Assembly process
Abstract
The Citizens' Assembly should have had a mandate which required it to submit several possible electoral systems to the voters at a referendum, rather than just one. [2 pages]

Submission Content
The UK Jenkins "Independent" Commission on electoral reform made the mistake of being under terms of reference which stipulated that it should limit its work to finding just one recommendation.  As a result, it was not very independent and it failed to encourage a proper debate.  And the fact that the UK government has still failed to hold a referendum on this issue rather proves the point that the whole thing was a whitewash, (a rather popular word in these islands at the moment).
 
As I'm sure you know, there are over 300 electoral systems to choose from.  None of them is perfect.  So no-one can say that "system A" is the best system for BC (or anywhere else) and expect the general consensus to agree with him/her.  Some people, after all, think PR-STV is a pretty good system; many still favour first-past-the-post; the two-tier AMS system seems to have quite a lot of support; and so it goes on.  That's democracy.  There are bound to be different opinions.  But that is not to say that there is not also bound to be one opinion which is everyone's best compromise, that is, in a multi-option preference vote, an option which is the highest average preference.
 
In many instances, a two-option majority vote means little if not nothing: no wonder they have been used by the likes of Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, Tudjman, Pinochet, Duvalier, Khomeini, Hitler, Mussolini and Napoleon.  They are a very good way of making what is the will of the dictator appear to be the will of the people.  In more benign societies, they are the way those who write the question try to dominate the agenda.  As President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "I simply made up my mind what [the people] ought to think, and then did my best to get them to think it."
 
In a referendum on electoral reform, for what does he who supports PR-STV or she who wants QBS vote, in a ballot between AMS and the status quo?  Why should the democratic process so stifle the democratic debate?  Multi-option voting is not rocket science!  Multi-option decision-making is what most of us do in our everyday lives, most likely starting from the age of 3 when there were no more fluffy flakes and we had to go for a second preference.  No wonder the New Zealand government held a five-option referendum on the subject.  Indeed, some countries have been using multi-option referendums for over a century, and the first in Canada, if I remember rightly, was not in Canada at all for it was in Newfoundland in 1949, when they held a 3-option poll on becoming part of Canada.  Now obviously - back to electoral reform - you can't have 300 options on the ballot paper.  But there is no reason at all why a Royal Commission, or yourselves in a Citizens' Assembly, cannot reduce the debate to a short list of, let us say, 5 options.
 
If such were to be the policy, then those who are in favour of a relatively unknown system like QBS would at least feel that they might be in with a chance.  Or even if you, the members of the Citizens' Assembly, were to say that you would take your final decision on the basis of a modified Borda count and that, in announcing your first preference, you would also declare what were your other preferences and what were their average preference scores, then again, there might be some point.
 
But why you, in Canada of all places, where you have already had two divisive two-option referendums in Quebec (as if there were only two constitutional ways for a province to be governed), and why you, in to-day's world, which as a result of holding two-option referendums has already suffered too many disastrous consequences, not least in Yugoslavia, should perpetuate the idea that citizens should, or can only, make decisions on the basis of a two-option vote, is almost a large a conundrum as why both the British and Irish governments, in signing the Belfast Agreement, could suddenly decide that that which had been a cause of so much violence in Northern Ireland - the question "Are you British or Irish?" - can suddenly become the harbinger of peace. 
 
I rest my case, and will certainly forward a paper on QBS, if it's worth it.  But is it?
 

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