Democracy is government of, by, and for all the people of the
constituency, In our case, the Province of British Columbia. We
have historically had a couple of major glitches in our system: 1)
that governments are elected with less than a majority of the votes
cast, and 2) that once elected, governments act in ways contrary to
what was promised, and often contrary to the expressed will and
best interest of their constituents. This leads to a third major
problem, a surfeit of cynicism and a concomitant lack of
participation in the democratic process, leaving the field open to
further abuse and corruption.
Some form of proportional representation [PR] would
eliminate the worst of the problem of majority governments elected
by a minority of voters. There would, however, need to
be continued representation for regions, given the population
disparity between urban and rural areas, and the apparent inability
of the electorate to look for overall good government rather than
what they can get back from government. There needs to be some sort
of check on the tyranny of the majority so that those minorities
within the greater constituency need not fear that their rights and
needs will be trampled by an unsympathetic majority.
Politicians are prone to unrealistic promises, if not outright
prevarication, during election campaigns. In order to curtail this
raising of expectations and the reversal of course when a
government gets elected, we need to think about strengthening the
provisions for recall and referendum. Parties wishing to form
government need to state clearly what their course of action will
be should they form government and should they deviate
substantially from that program, they should be required to submit
those changes to referendum or face recall and/or general
election.
The problem of money in politics is a contributing factor in all
of the problems we experience in a democracy. The link
between political contributions and post-election pay-offs is too
great to be ignored, and the parade of politicians into plum posts
in the private sector immediately following exit from politics
suggests that governments are beholden to a narrow constituency and
that that narrow constituency is beholden to government in what
constitutes a cozy relationship of crony corruption.
This relationship is also reflected in press coverage where those
who determine the editorial and news content and slant are often
the friend of one party or the other. Election advertising could be
paid for from tax revenues and strictly limited, apportioned
according to votes gathered in the previous election with a basic
grant for new parties who would have to meet a certain threshold to
avoid frivolous entry into the electoral arena. Press would need to
have stipulations of equal access.
Citizen participation in the democratic process must be
encouraged not only to coincide with election campaigns, but also
throughout the term of government by ensuring that information on
legislation, debate and other forms of government/opposition action
be widely disseminated. Too much of what happens in government is
done behind a curtain of secrecy and obfuscation, too often
requiring lengthy battles through Freedom of Information requests
to get to the facts of what our representatives are doing. The
information apparatus needs to be strengthened and made more open,
while the use of taxpayer money for party propaganda needs to be
severely sanctioned. The auditor-general's office needs to have
funding restored and legislative teeth put into the results of any
audit recommendations.
As a final note, I would like to express my consternation at the
current furor over voting systems in the United States and to
strongly voice my support for continued use of paper ballots
counted by local volunteers. Our simple, low-tech system seems to
produce acceptable and speedy counts, obviating the need for voting
machines of any kind. While there may be some susceptibility to
fraud in our system, it would be terribly difficult to corrupt the
whole system, or even enough of it to influence the outcome of an
election, whereas, particularly with electronic voting, a simple
adjustment of the software in the machine could produce a result
desired by someone other than the entirety of the electorate.
We have settled for much grief through a succession of
governments because we have been willing to settle for quick and
dirty, partisan "solutions" to complex problems that face a society
in flux. In the shorter term, we need revisions to
re-establish some sense of real participation in democracy, and in
the longer term, we need to continue to educate ourselves to be
part of governing ourselves more actively instead of delegating
uncritical and, for the term of government, immutable authority to
potentially unresponsive representatives.
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