News release

Assembly works on electoral 'statement'

Members of the Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform began on the weekend to work towards a "preliminary statement" on electoral reform, designed to spark public debate before public hearings begin in May and June.

Meeting in Vancouver, members began Sunday to assess B.C.'s current system of translating votes into seats in the legislature and to identify advantages and disadvantages for politics and government.

On the weekend of March 20-21, they will complete their statement, and include a list of other electoral systems for all British Columbians to consider. The aim is to generate discussion for a series of 49 public hearings to be held all over B.C. in May and June.

The public hearings will be immediately followed by a meeting in Prince George June 26-27 at which members will 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 B.C.'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 B.C. election.

The Assembly's 160 members come from all over B.C.  For background (and the schedule of public hearings) see the Assembly website at www.citizensassembly.bc.ca.

Among the strengths the Assembly members identified Sunday in our current "First Past the Post" system of selecting MLAs: The voting process is simple and the results are quickly known. There are identifiable local representatives.  Parties and MLAs can be held accountable at the polls. The system tends to promote effective, stable government. And it often leads to majority governments that can "get things done".

Among the weaknesses they listed:  Lack of proportionality (the distribution of seats in the Legislature does not necessarily reflect the popular vote). Adversarial politics. Voters have limited choice of parties and candidates. Smaller parties are marginalized.  And the system tends to produce polarized B.C. politics — described by one member as "Military government: Left, Right, Left, Right. . . ."

March 20-21 will be the last weekend of the members "learning phase" on electoral systems.  They meet at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at 580 West Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver.  Meetings are open to the public, but space is limited and seating is first come, first seated.  Meeting times are: Saturday, 9 a.m.  noon and 1 - 5 p.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m.- 12:30 p.m.

Saturday (March 6), two international experts on electoral systems made it clear that the task of Assembly members (and of the B.C. public) in evaluating various electoral systems is no easy one.

David Farrell of the University of Manchester, England, told members: "You can never predict what the change (of an electoral system) is going to do. . . In a lot of cases, the electoral system is neither here nor there (as a factor). It has a lot more to do with political culture . . . and the rules of how your parliament operates."

And Elizabeth McLeay of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, added: "It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to predict all the effects of any electoral system change. . . . If you do make a change, you have to give the new rules time to settle down; at least three parliamentary sessions. And don't expect electoral system reform to cure all, or even most, of a political system's problems."