Third time’s the charm? That’s the hope of electoral reform advocates in British Columbia, who will try again this year to scrap the province’s first-past-the-post system in a referendum, after defeats in 2005 and 2009.
This go-round, they appear determined to change their luck. Instead of the 60-per-cent threshold for victory in the last two votes, this ballot will require a simple majority to pass, the NDP has said.
The identity of the governing party is not incidental. In B.C., the minority NDP government is propped up by the Green Party. New Democrats and Greens the country over clamor for electoral reform: As the third and fourth choices of many voters, they are habitually underrepresented in legislatures relative to their share of the popular vote in our winner-take-all system.
That may be an argument in favor of electoral reform – not a decisive one, mind you – but it’s also a reason to approach any such referendum led by those parties with skepticism.
The risk is that they will game the process to ensure the result they want. The integrity of our electoral process is too important to be played for partisan advantage.
So it’s worrying that the two parties intend to put forward such a vague, self-serving question to voters. In a submission written for the referendum consultation process in February, which came to light only recently, the NDP and Greens suggest asking voters to choose between the status quo and some undefined form of proportional representation.
In the past two votes on the subject, British Columbians were asked to choose between first-past-the-post and a PR system called the single transferable vote, in which voters would elect a group of MLAs from larger ridings.
This time, details of the proposed system would be left out. The parties recommend creating a panel of experts and select citizens to hash out the specifics if electoral reform wins.
That’s no way to reshape a province’s democracy. There’s a wide variety of PR systems with varying characteristics; some emphasize strict proportionality at the expense of local representation, for example. In a ballot of this magnitude, voters should know what they’re signing up for.