Vaughn Palmer, The Vancouver Sun

Devil's advocate outlines electoral devil we know, and the one we don't

By Vaughn Palmer

The Vancouver Sun,  26 October 12004

VICTORIA - The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform opened its proceedings Sunday with a strong defence of the status quo.

"Why would B.C. even want to change its electoral system?" asked Ken Carty, the on-leave University of B.C. political scientist who served as chief researcher for the assembly.

"The system has served the country and the province well for its history," Carty continued. "This is a country that people come to, and don't leave. This is a province that people come to, and don't leave."

Assembly chair Jack Blaney had challenged Carty to make sure the assembly didn't lightly discard the existing system. Carty gave it his best devil's advocate shot.

The existing system has its flaws, he noted, but most of those involve electoral results. The party that wins the most votes doesn't always win the most seats. Smaller parties are shut out. Lopsided majorities. And so on.

But it is an effective system for delivering majority governments, most of the time.

Carty ticked off the advantages of majority governments: "They have a mandate for policy and action. They can be policy innovators. They can make unpopular decisions."

He mentioned the 1972 New Democratic Party government, bringing in lasting (though at the time daring) innovations like the agricultural land reserve and government-owned auto insurance.

Majority governments tend to be strong governments. And strong governments, Carty continued, are necessary to defend B.C.'s interests in federal-provincial relations. They are also accountable governments, at election time. In 2001, no voter had any difficulty figuring out who to blame.

Carty contrasted all this -- clear mandates, stable governments, obvious blamelines -- with the likely result of a shift to some form of proportional representation -- namely no one party winning a majority of the seats in the legislature.

"If no one has a majority, it is not clear that anybody has a mandate for anything," he said. So the minorities parties will try to cobble together a coalition.

Coalitions "are unstable, they can break up at any time." They are unlikely innovators.

In a mischievous aside, Carty wondered if something as daring as the assembly could be the product of a coalition.

Nor are coalitions as accountable at election time. "It is harder to decide how to blame a coalition," he said.

Coalitions can also become vehicles for entrenching unpopular parties and politicians.

He mentioned Italy's 53 or so governments in 42 or thereabouts years. Most of those administrations consisted of the Christian Democrats in shifting alliances with smaller parties.

No matter how unpopular the various administrations they served, "you couldn't get them [the Christian Democrats] out," Carty said.

People complain about secrecy and backdoor dealings in the current system. But coalition governments are often formed behind closed doors, with voters having little or no say in what happens.

"Elections end up being more about your choice of ideologies than your choice of governments," he observed. "Governments will be decided by the politicians after the election."

Which is not the rosy picture that advocates of reform would have us imagine as we contemplate changing our electoral system.

It was, all in all, an impressive demonstration of the professionalism and integrity of the assembly staff.

Carty had ensured that before assembly members cast their ballots to change the system later in the day, the status quo got a good sendoff -- or a decent burial .

He did such a good job, I teased him that in the coming referendum he ought to be chairing the "no" campaign.

But he was as thorough in outlining the case for reforming the system. And he left it to assembly members, well informed as they were, to make up their own minds.

Long before Sunday, assembly members had decided that there were enough flaws in the current system to warrant a change. The only substantive debate was over which was the best alternative.

They went for the single transferrable vote. They believe it will do the better job of reconciling regional representation with proportionality, of promoting local candidates against party interests.

The assembly made a good choice among the alternatives. But I'm not persuaded of the wisdom of moving to any system that will mean more coalitions, fewer majorities.

Still, I was impressed by the assembly and I would urge people to give its recommendation serious consideration.

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Thank you to all the readers who wrote or called to say that this proposed new single transferable vote system is the same as the one that was in place in B.C. for the 1952 and 1953 elections.

Not so. There are significant differences, not least that the former system is less proportional and more likely to deliver a majority government.

vpalmer@direct.ca

[© Copyright 2004, The Vancouver Sun. Reproduced here by permission of The Vancouver Sun.]