News release

Citizens Assembly selection begins

VANCOUVER – The selection process is under way to identify 158 British Columbians who will be members of the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Beginning Monday, letters of invitation will go out over the next seven weeks to 15,800 British Columbians, whose names have been randomly selected from the provincial voters list. From among those, two people will be named from each electoral district – one man and one woman – for a total of 158 members.

The members will be selected by late November. Then they will sit as an independent, non-partisan assembly to examine the province’s electoral system — that is, how our votes determine who gets elected to sit in the provincial Legislature.

The Citizens’ Assembly will meet a number of times during 2004 to review electoral systems from around the world, and our current system. If the members recommend a change, they will draft a referendum question for the provincial election in 2005.

Says Jack Blaney, chair of the Citizens’ Assembly: "This will be public service at its best. This project is unique in Canadian history. Never have non-elected citizens played such a vital role in shaping the democratic process."

Here’s how the selection process works: First, Elections B.C. randomly picked 15,800 names from the voters list, 200 for each constituency. These are evenly divided between men and women, and reflect the age patterns in each region. Then, from those who express interest in joining the Assembly, and are qualified (active politicians, for example, cannot be members), 20 will be randomly chosen from each constituency. These groups of 20 will each attend a regional meeting, starting in mid-October. At the end of each meeting, the names of one man and one woman will be drawn to serve on the Citizens’ Assembly from each of British Columbia’s 79 electoral districts.