Submission KELLY-0564 (Online)

Be minimal.  Recommend the smallest change likely to achieve your objective.

Keep it simple.  The voting system must remain user friendly.

Make it reversible.  An Assembly recommendation approved in a referendum may not work out as anticipated.  A built in back-out mechanism is required.

Remember merchandising.  Suggest to government a mechanism for explaining and selling your recommendation to the BC public prior to the referendum.

Retain the 79 first-past-the-post seats, which produce MLA’s directly accountable to their electorates.  Add to it a number of seats which would be distributed among the parties in proportion to their share of the provincial vote total.  Twenty-one proportional seats would produce a Legislature of 100 members, without the likelihood of an endless series of minority governments, but with the certainty of a meaningful opposition.  Alternatively, reduce the 79 directly elected seats to 75, and add 25 proportional seats for a Legislature composed in a 3 to 1 ratio of direct to proportional members.

Keep the vote for the proportional members simple by providing the voter with a ballot which asks only two questions: “Which individual do you choose to directly represent the constituency?  Which party is your proportional choice?”  Leave to the parties the construction of the party lists and priority ranking of individuals.    Do not confuse voters by asking them to choose a proportional representative by first choosing a party and then choosing a specific representative from among lengthy lists of possible members.  The parties will ensure that their lists are balanced by region, gender, ethnicity, background and so on.

Suggest that your recommendation, if adopted in the referendum, be applied in two elections, and endorsed or rejected at a third election.  That is, following a referendum at the time of the provincial election in 2005, and assuming a four year election cycle, the recommendation would take effect in the election of 2009, be continued in 2013, and be placed for reconsideration in a referendum at the time of the election of 2017 (with any resulting change taking effect in 2021).  This would ensure that the electoral reform was in place for three full electoral cycles, sufficient time for the political process to fully adjust to the changed rules, and for the public to make a measured determination of its appropriateness.  Of course, if the change produced short-lived minority government, then the electoral cycles would be shorter, and the reconsideration date would arrive faster, which might be appropriate in that circumstance.

Consider how to sell your recommendation to the voting public.  A well thought out recommendation for change placed for referendum will not necessarily win the necessary support if it is not actively sold to the public.  If one of the major political parties campaigns against the recommendation (because it went too far, or not far enough), endorsement might be very difficult.  How might the Assembly organize support for its proposal?  Could we have a “Friends of the Assembly Society”, organized on a constituency by constituency basis, supported by interested volunteers able and willing to get out the vote?  How might this come about?  Should the provincial government provide funding to “official” pro and con organizations?  Could the Assembly itself have a formal role in explaining its recommendation to the public?

Consider restricting proportional members to a maximum of two terms in the Legislature.  I support introducing a measure of proportionality into the Legislature.  But there is something unseemly about the prospect of creating an opportunity for career politicians to sit in the Legislature indefinitely because they hold a high priority place on their party’s list, without ever having to face the voters directly.