News release

Assembly hears international experts

Electoral systems experts from New Zealand and England will address the Assembly at their next weekend of meetings, March 6-7. 

David Farrell is Jean Monnet chair of European Politics at the University of Manchester and the author of Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction, the resource book being used by members of the Assembly.  Elizabeth McLeay, from the Victoria University of Wellington, is an authority on the effects of electoral change on parties, policy and parliament. 

Their addresses to the Assembly will focus on:

Assembly members meet at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at 580 West Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver on Saturday and Sunday, March 6-7.  Meetings are open to the public, but space is limited and seating is first come, first seated.  Meeting times are: Saturday, 9am – noon and 1 – 5pm; Sunday, 9am – 12:30pm.

This will be the fifth of six full weekends in which Assembly members learn about electoral systems. In May and June, the Assembly will hold 49 public hearings in communities throughout BC.  The public hearings will be immediately followed by a meeting in Prince George on the weekend of June 26-27 at which members will review and discuss what they heard from British Columbians during the hearings. Then in the fall, members will hold five or six full weekends of deliberation, culminating in a final recommendation. 

Members of the Assembly must decide by December 15 if they will propose a change to BC’s current system of translating votes into seats in the Legislature. If they recommend a change, it will be the subject of a referendum for all voters in the May 2005 provincial election. Any change approved by the voters would take effect with the 2009 BC election.

The Assembly's 160 members come from all over B.C. 

While they’re in BC, Farrell and McLeay will also speak at SFU and UBC:
       
Elizabeth McLeay:
March 3, 11:30am-12:30pm, SFU Harbour Centre
MPs and mixed member proportional electoral systems: Lessons from New Zealand

March 9, 3-5pm, UBC, Buchanan Building Penthouse
Maori representation in New Zealand parliaments
    
David Farrell:
March 5, 1-2:30pm, UBC Buchanan Building Penthouse
Voter satisfaction and electoral systems: Does preferential voting in candidate-centred systems make a difference?