Vaughn Palmer, The Vancouver Sun

As often happens, where you stand depends on where you sit

The Vancouver Sun, Saturday, August 14, 2004

By Vaughn Palmer

VICTORIA - The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform defined the basic challenge for itself in a preliminary statement to British Columbians this past spring. The assembly believes that "local representation needs to be an important element in the province's electoral system."

It also believes "a more proportional system would better reflect the basic values of our province's population."

Unfortunately for advocates of electoral reform, those two objectives are to some degree incompatible.

"The more of one requires that you have less of the other," as Tom Berger, the city of Vancouver's electoral reform commissioner, put it recently. He rejected calls for the city to adopt proportional representation as part of its proposed move to a ward system.

The purest form of proportional representation, as Berger noted, would sacrifice local representation altogether. If a party got 40 per cent of the vote, then the top 40 per cent of the names on its list of candidates would be elected, never mind where they came from.

In fairness to advocates of electoral reform, they know the problem as well as anyone. And they've been creative about finding ways to balance the competing needs of proportional and local representation.

Most of those options will be front and centre when the citizens' assembly meets next month to begin the final phase of its work on electoral reform.

The Sept. 11 opening session will feature a kind of greatest hits lineup from the public hearings in the spring. There are to be nine speakers in all, each of them invited back to jump-start the assembly's final, so-called deliberation phase.

Most of the speakers, as noted here earlier in the week, advocate change. Full details of their proposals can be read on the assembly's website: www.citizensassembly.bc.ca.

The most obvious point of departure among them involves seat distribution versus balloting systems.

Some would redistribute the house into seats filled from local constituencies and seats elected at large based on each party's showing in the popular vote. The former would preserve a measure of locality, the latter a degree of proportionality.

In the system favoured by the largest number of submissions to the assembly -- known as mixed-member proportional representation -- half the seats would be filled at large, the balance from local constituencies. Some submissions attempted to do more for local representation by reducing the at-large contingent to as little as 15 per cent of the seats.

Another set of reforms concentrates on the ballot. Voters would be allowed to rate the candidates by preference: First choice, second and so on. If no one won a majority in the first count, the bottom contender would be dropped and the second choices distributed.

And there are proposals that involve changes in both balloting and seat distribution. Where you stand on those options depends on where you sit.

In general, the reforms that include some system for electing members at large do more to encourage the development of smaller parties and (ultimately) governing coalitions. Those reforms that concentrate on balloting tend, by encouraging voters to rank their preferences, to build support for majoritarian movements.

Note, too, that since each involves some degree of compromise, none offers a solution to every concern about electoral reform. With most options, it would still be possible to hypothesize an election where the party that got the most votes did not win the most seats in the legislature.

The debate on those and other possibilities is likely to occupy the assembly for some time to come. As many as six weekend sessions are scheduled throughout the fall.

"Members will work toward consensus," the assembly says in an official statement. But if that eludes them, "final decisions will be passed in a majority vote."

Which will not be the end of it, of course. The assembly's recommendation will be passed on the electorate, via a referendum at the next provincial election.

At this stage, I expect the assembly will recommend a new electoral system, and mixed-member proportional representation looks like the front-runner. But it is possible, after all the debates, that the members will go for something less ambitious, and more tailored to concerns about local representation.

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I should note, for the record, that Green leader Adriane Carr denies the allegation that her party tried to stack the submissions to the assembly. Assembly member Allan McKinnon said last month that it looked to him as if 400 of the 1,000 public submissions were the result of a "concerted effort" by the Greens. Carr, and other Greens, are on record as supporting mixed-member proportional representation.

vpalmer@direct.ca

(c) The Vancouver Sun, 2004. This article appears on our website by permission of The Vancouver Sun.