Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW
He also offers his thoughtful perspective of Stephen Harper’s last 10 years in his recent eBook, The Harper Decade.

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Guess that's a No then

by Paul Wells on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:16am - 108 Comments

On the BC electoral reform referendum, it wasn’t even close. BC-STV didn’t carry a voter majority in almost any riding, and it didn’t come anywhere near the 60% threshold in total popular vote. Faced with the same question a second time, far fewer British Columbians voted Yes.

That must settle the question. It was pushing things to ask the electoral-reform question a second time. Advocates of STV, who fancy themselves advocates of greater democracy, must not “give it a rest” or “regroup and try again later” — in British Columbia, they must give up. It’s over.

Advocates of electoral reform elsewhere have to ask themselves serious questions about what went wrong in BC. In no particular order, here are a few thoughts (some of which have been suggested to me in emails from Inkless Irregulars):

• The Yes campaign’s chosen colours were nearly identical to the party colours of the losing party in the general election. That’s really dumb.

• The Yes campaign had no single, highly visible personality to act as standard-bearer for the idea. That sort of person can come in handy during a referendum campaign, as I believe Lucien Bouchard would tell you if you asked.

• The whole asking-twice thing is highly annoying to many voters. They were right to be annoyed. Message to would-be electoral reformers: the price of getting something wrong on your first attempt is very high.

• Just by the luck of things, this referendum fell on the same day as one of British Columbia’s exceedingly rare non-pathological general elections. The Gordon Campbell Liberals won 46% of the popular vote and about 58% of seats. The familiar first-past-the-post phenomenon — a plurality of votes produces a majority of seats — was at play here, but there was no wild distortion of the kind that makes the case for electoral reform, as there usually is in BC elections.

• BC-STV is more complicated than reform should have been. Reform advocates, who like to dive into the minutae of electoral-system theory, have a much higher tolerance for the arcane plumbing of various voting systems than does the ordinary voter. So reform advocates tend to wildly overestimate voter patience for a system that takes more than a few sentences to explain.

Tags: BC-STV, electoral reform

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Matt

I am disappointed. Your point regarding being asked twice is well taken. Doesnt that make Gordon Campbell’s decision to set the thresholds in 2005 at 60% a craven one? Setting the bar so exceedingly high was a purely political reason. How come STV needed 60% but the PQ in Quebec in ’95 needed only 50%+1?

Paul Wells

Because Gordon Campbell understood the argument behind the federal Clarity Act: Major systemic changes that would be hard to reverse should command more than a bare majority. Campbell has done a few things to get me angry at him, but setting a high threshold for an important referendum is to his credit, as was the entire electoral-reform process.

Mark Greenan

Paul, love the blog, but I know you’re smart enough to know that changing the electoral system is not a change “that would be hard to reverse”.

At any point, a bare majority of legislators can change the electoral system. That applies to the federal parliament as well as provincial legislatures.

So there goes that argument for undemocratic super-majority thresholds …

King Rat

In theory, sure. In practice, switching electoral systems is something that the electorate usually ratifies, as in the example of New Zealand, which I believe is the most recent example of a comparable country switching systems. For one thing, a bare majority of legislators changing the electoral system could very easily be prey to perverse incentives.

In other news from the theory meets practice files, everyone knows that just as the current system has parties that benefit from it, so would a more proportional system. Put in PR, and the small parties that hold the balance of power will never consent to putting the system on the table again. There isn’t anything wrong with that, of course, but defenders of the status quo aren’t wrong to see this as a fight we have to win every time out.

Finally, complaining about the threshold would be a lot more compelling if STV hadn’t just yesterday failed to keep FPTP from meeting it. I understand that 2005 must have been immensely frustrating for your side, and you got a second crack at it, which I think was fair. Electoral reform just got hammered. That’s not to say you have to give up forever, but a long period of quiet is in order, at least in BC.

Paul Wells

I’m smart enough to agree with King Rat.
sf

Me too.

Not sure if I’m smart enough, but I do agree anyway.
Mark Greenan

“Put in PR, and the small parties that hold the balance of power will never consent to putting the system on the table again.”

But if we bring in PR, do you think that small parties will make up the majority of a parliament? Because if they don’t, there’s no reason that the larger parties who are hurt by the move to PR, couldn’t just use their legislative majority to reform the system again.
King Rat

“But if we bring in PR, do you think that small parties will make up the majority of a parliament? Because if they don’t, there’s no reason that the larger parties who are hurt by the move to PR, couldn’t just use their legislative majority to reform the system again.”

Once again, this is correct in theory but vanishingly unlikely in practice. By definition, the large parties are the ones competing to head the government, and are highly unlikely to ally with each other on a technical issue like the electoral system when they could be more profitably seeking out longer term partnerships to form government with the smaller parties. I mean, sure, it could happen, but everyone knows it wouldn’t.
nd

So why pretend it was a fair fight then?

A 60% threshold is so mindbogglingly arbitrary (why not 59 or 84 or 63.3333), that it’s difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation for the 2005 result that isn’t “STV won, but Campbell moved the goalposts”, like the famed cowboy who shoots at a barn door, then paints a target around the shots. This without mentioning the irony that, in 2005, STV got considerably more votes than Campbell’s party.

More accurate to say, I think, that Campbell (and in a similar way McGuinty) felt constrained to hold the electoral reform referenda, but agreed to do so with their fingers crossed behind their back. If they didn’t actively undermine the reform side, they certainly did their best to starve it of any official support, and just for good measure, they set capriciously high thresholds for success.

Electoral reform got hammered all right. But it fought on a rigged field of play, with one hand tied behind its back.
King Rat

Again, this was not a case where you got 58 or 59 percent. This was not a case where the political establishment or the media conspired to shut electoral reform out of the debate.STV got a second hearing after coming up just short the first time, had prominent endorsers from across the political spectrum, an official campaign with equal funding to the No side and widespread media endorsement-seriously, if you look, you’ll find an awful lot more op-eds supporting it than opposing it. And not only did STV fail to meet the 60 percent threshold, it was so thoroughly beaten that FPTP actually met the supermajority requirement.

I’m genuinely curious to know what STV supporters believe would have constituted a fair fight. I’m sure there were obstacles they had to overcome, but the same is true for our side. More importantly, though, I say in all respect that electoral reform advocates don’t seem to have grasped just how badly they were beaten Tuesday. A refusal to acknowledge the verdict of the electorate is unbecoming in a movement that claims the mantle of democracy’s defenders, and is unlikely to lead to future successes.

Matthew Fletcher

“At any point a bare majority of legislators can change the electoral system.” Sure. But how often do they do that? Ever? If they did so, without holding a referrendum and only with a bare 50%+1 vote, that might split on party lines, how legitimate would that appear to people?

Setting high thresholds for big changes like this increases the legitimacy if the change is made. The fact that legislators have not taken it upon themselves to make the changes, as you say they could easily do, suggests they understand this.

Mark Greenan

“The fact that legislators have not taken it upon themselves to make [electoral] changes” is not a reflection of their great concern for the public legitimacy of institutional reform, but rather the incontrovertible reality that they face a fundamental conflict of interest when considering changes to the electoral system.

Of course, politicians that get elected under our current system tend to think that there’s nothing wrong with the system that got them elected (increased cynicism about politics and declining voter turnout be damned!). Indeed, this is reflected by cross-national research on candidate and legislator views on institutional reform.

David

The PQ might have “needed” only 50%+1… but they weren’t the only ones with “needs”.

Kevin

Paul, it wasn’t the same question twice in a row.

First question allowed people to say “yes” or “no” to BC-STV. This one asked people to choose between “our current system” and BC-STV, “proposed by the Citizen’s Assembly.”

People like to say ‘yes’ to things, but also like to keep things the way they are.

Additionally, the reason why the referendum happened again was because 57.8% of people last time voted yes to BC-STV. The No STV side may claim that voters ‘rejected’ BC-STV in 2005, but a majority voted for it.
http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

in British Columbia, they must give up. It’s over.

Yup, they should do that right after conservatives end their 4 decade old quest to get rid of the CBC or publicly funded healthcare. Give up, I don’t think so. We fight till we win.

Paul Wells

When were the CBC and healthcare referendums?

http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

Does missing the point come naturally to you, Paul, or do you have to work at it?

Paul Wells

This from a guy who’s spent several years trying to persuade everybody he had a point with his repeated and odious comments about Jews. Gonna fight that one until you win too?

http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

Are you having fun rolling around in the slop?
Paul Wells

It’s hard to avoid where you’re involved. Let me make this clear: I don’t take any comment from you on any subject as legitimate. I have very ample reason to take this position. You might as well know that. Now you get to pout and whine. Again.
http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

I don’t take any comment from you on any subject as legitimate.

I drew that conclusion about five years ago when you bit my head off the very first time I emailed you.

I have very ample reason to take this position.

I ran over your dog, right?

Terry

When did the conservatives want to get rid of publicly funded healthcare? Allowing a private option isn’t the same as ending public funding.

Douglass

I agree with all of your points and raise one more.

STV what???

There was a serious lack of knowledge that this was an option again. Most people we came across had no clue what it was until they were standing in front of the voting booth, slip in hand. People are unlikely to vote for something they know nothing about when they are forced to pick during the crunch.

Only in the last few days of the campaign did STV even get much media play. I will thank the staff at Maclean’s, they did their part to inform. Unfortunately not enough other media outlets were doing the same.

Paul Wells

Don’t thank us too loudly or old man Spector will come out of his cave again, waving his cane.

Canuckistanian

;-D

SAB

I actually think a more effective way to have the debate on electoral reform would be to do it outside of a general election. In Ontario it was also during election which shifts focus away from electoral reform. Yes it would cost more but probably worth it.

catherine

If they had proposed Instant Runoff Voting, it might have passed. It is a simple change from our current system, does not involve redrawing boundaries, keeps local representation and does not give parties more influence than they currently have.

Mulletaur

Now THAT’S a proposal for electoral reform I could campaign for …

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Perhaps what BC needs is a third mainstream party, so that tectonic disgust with a current government does not swing all the swing voters towards the only other option.

It’s rather eerie that this BC election should have been so balanced. Were it not for past history, one would conclude that the BC FPTP system is working just fine.

Johnny

It does have a third mainstream party: the Green Party.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

I don’t want to knock the Green Party, but it’s not really mainstream. It won 8% of the vote and no seats. Also, does it attract voters who would vote Liberal? For me, “mainstream” means that you can take votes from all the other parties. I’m not judging the Greens, just suggesting that what BC needs (since it’s apparently retaining FPTP) is 3-way races and vote-splitting; otherwise how are the Greens, say, going to win seats?

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

“otherwise how are the Greens, say, going to win seats?”

By proposing policies that attract voters.

FPTP works best when there are only two parties, and maybe one minor one that gets 2% of the vote or somesuch, because one party is likely to have at least 50% of the vote.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

“FPTP works best when there are only two parties”

FPTP only works when voting blocs are relatively stable and swing voters are consequently few. BC was getting these tidal shifts because everybody was functioning as a swing voter. I’m just saying that if voting preferences in BC are so fluid, they need more options for where they can flow.
MC

“FPTP works best when there are only two parties, and maybe one minor one that gets 2% of the vote or somesuch, because one party is likely to have at least 50% of the vote.”

FPTP actually tends to create or bolster two-party systems (I made an off-hand comment about Duverger’s law earlier). One party is pretty unlikely to get 50% of the vote even in an essentially two-party system (minor parties get a share) but is quite likely to get more than 50% of the seats.
http://www.savedarfur.org Sophia Geffros

But, Jack, then won’t the results of FPTP be the same that they are in every province with 3 or more relatively mainstream parties?
That is to say, dysfunctional.
Not to mention, there are plenty of parties that take votes away from a candidate without ever winning a seat.
My provincial riding has consistently had the highest conservative majority in the province, but the real reason that is is because of the ridiculous amount of fringe parties: somehow, the Christian Voters alliance and the Family Alliance and the Greens and the Marxist-Leninists and the 6 crazy independent guys and the grassroots movement to spoil the ballot with Don Cherry as a write-in-candidate manage to combine to take a good 15 percent of the vote.
None of these parties can really be called ‘mainstream’, but combined, they’ve returned teh same guy to office since Mike Harris’s tenure- and despite being elected by the biggest margin, aforementioned guy *still* wind less than 50% of the vote every time.
Mike T.

I think it makes more sense to talk about the venerable, longstanding method of FPTP in terms of tending to deliver certain types of results, rather than ‘working’ or ‘not working’.
sf

When there are more than 2 parties getting many votes, FPTP encourages them to hammer out their differences and unite until there are two parties. Which gives the voters a very clear picture of what to expect when one of them wins.

If they cannot hammer out their differences, then that is a pretty strong indication that FPTP is not such a bad thing at all.

If they cannot hammer out their differences before the vote, then that will not happen after the vote when STV delivers a fractured parliament. And so maybe it’s a good thing that FPTP will deliver a clear winner.

Terry

There is no reason that the Green party couldn’t be mainstream. After all, environmentalism could be a cross partisan issue, as long as the sacrifices demanded are demanded from both consumers and industry, and is done reasonably. As well, there is no reason that the Greens could not seek a centrist position on social and economic issues.

Unfortunately, the left wing dominance of the party and subsequent selection of leaders such as Elizabeth May and Jane Sterk to lead the party have pretty much made that development impossible. It is now largely the party for those who are so extremely left wing that they think the NDP has sold out.

SAB

The reason it won’t be mainstream is because the Liberals are already moving torwards environmentalism as a core plank in their platform and the Conservatives will eventually too.

sf

I would agree with, and I would agree with it even more if I lived in BC. If I lived in BC, I would be very eager to throw out Campbell, but I would be even more eager to avoid the NDP.

And to Johnny, I don’t like to vote for parties whose platforms revolve around a single issue (eg Green/environment, Marijuana Party/marijuana, etc).

I do not see the need for the green party to exist.

jerred

Also consider the abysmally low voter turnout which favours lack of change. More than anything, though, this has been another tired lesson on the power of advertising and how inappropriate it is for debating complex issues. Once the label of “complicated and confusing” was thrown (this time around, with far more negative connotations than in 2005), it stuck and there was no recovery possible for the yes side. Anecdotally, it was the one and only thing most people I talked to knew about STV.

I’m still a supporter for electoral reform, but in the context of democratic renewal, a greater priority has to be given to killing political TV/radio advertising of any kind. We can’t pretend any longer that airing our issues in 30-45 second clips and sound bytes is conducive to good self-governance.

Northern PoV

And on Politics/Newsworld
DURING THE VOTING
we hear Terry Milewski tells us the STV is too hard to explain

Perhaps the CBC should hire more intelligent reporters and try to stay impartial

Mark Greenan

I am normally a fan of Milewski, but that comment was completely inappropriate (and sadly all too common in referendum coverage).

Indeed, if he can’t wrap his head around STV, they should put another report on the story.

And on that, I think the BC media would have been completely justified in ignoring the NO-STV campaign. After all, they were saying that they can’t understand STV, it’s too complicated. So why were BCers forced to listen to the opinions of people who don’t even comprehend the topic?

avr

This attitude right here is exactly why STV lost.

First, you assume that it’s so self-evidently appealing and sensible that anyone with concerns about complexity must simply be too stupid to be considered as having a legitimate opinion. Exacerbating that, you’d like to see media outlets conspire to ignore one entire side of a debate to be decided by popular referendum? Really? How democratically-minded STV proponents are.

Northern PoV

Reporting that people find STV complicated is fair game.
That is not what happened here (and in much of the media coverage.)
To blithely reinforce an arguably specious talking point of one side of the campaign is criminal.
Mark Greenan

As Northern POV notes, you’re distorting what I’m saying (don’t know if it’s deliberate though).

I agree with N-POV, that it’s fine that the BC media if the media report that BCers find STV confusing (leaving aside the point that reflects a failure of the media themselves to inform the public on STV). I’m sure many of them did.

But reporting that some people find STV confusing is a completely different kettle of fish from repeating the baseless spin of NO-STV.

First, my from my observations, one of the main points in their argument was that STV is “too complicated” for British Columbians to understand. Indeed, I saw at least a few of the members of that group – almost all experienced political campaigners – say that they didn’t understand STV. I think the BC media owed the population a thorough dissection of those claims.

I mean are we really expected to believe that veteran political campaigners don’t understand how STV works? These are men and women who have run complex organizations, large political campaigns and have generally had successful careers. And they don’t understand STV, do you REALLY believe them when they say that?

Second, if a group taking a position on the issue states publicly that “they don’t understand” the issue at hand, should the media be seeking them out as a source on the topic? For example, I know jack squat about nuclear power. So if I started up a group against nuclear power and, while lobbying against it, admitted I really didn’t understand how nuclear works, do you think the media would pay my group any attention?

I never said that the BC media should have kept NO-STV out of the debate. Indeed, if they had engaged in a fair debate about the merits of STV and the current voting system, they could have increased public understanding of STV. But instead, they decided to run a fear campaign based on mistruths, like “STV is too complicated” and “STV fractionalize your vote and you’ll never know where it goes” (another lie, unless you can’t do Grade 5 math). In light of their campaign, a responsible media would have given them little play, unless they engaged in the debate in a constructive manner.
avr

a responsible media would have given them little play

Why does it always come back to Official Legitimization of Opinions with you people? NO-STV took a position. If you thought their platform was inadequate, it’s your job to get that message out. What you’re demanding is a media sufficiently “responsible” that only topics reaching your bar for newsworthiness should be reported on, which is a conveniently easy (and frankly frightening) way to marginalize opposing views.

Northern PoV

Thanks
I lodged a complaint at the CBC site, btw.

jerred

I’ll do the same. I also caught the segment on TV and the same phrase dripping with incredulity on how he wouldn’t even tryyyyyyyy–insert Terry Milewski’s favourite intonation for, “I can’t even believe I’m saying this on air”–to explain how the system works, it’s so confusing. It was infuriating.

King Rat

Let me get this straight: you feel it would serve the interests of democracy for one side of a referendum campaign to be ignored by the media? Geez.

Also, whether you like it or not, if you are asking people to enact a new system of government and they don’t understand it immediately, that’s your problem, not theirs. That’s not to say that the complexities of STV were disqualifying in and of themselves, but pretending they don’t exist does a disservice to the electorate and ultimately to your own cause.

Northern PoV

typical

You shills either deliberately twist what has been said by those who disagree with you
or
you are simply too dumb to understand them
jerred

It would serve the interests of democracy for media to do its job and inform the public of the issues rather than standing by as a passive arbitrator to a competition of spin. How is it that not a single newspaper even bothered to give a comparative rundown of voting systems?
avr

you are simply too dumb to understand

Thanks for being exactly the smug, hectoring cariacature I was describing, NPOV.
King Rat

I thank you, Northern PoV, for demonstrating my point made in the huge long post below, namely:

“They have a rather unattractive habit of portraying the current system as undemocratic, which it isn’t, and an equally unattractive habit of portraying all opposition as venally motivated or stupid.”

I don’t think I could’ve written a better example myself.

The media is going to report on both sides of a political dispute. If anything, they gave more space to the Yes side, which was probably as it should have been, given that you guys were the ones presenting the issue and because you had more to explain. If you can’t make your case, given the opportunities given to electoral reform in this campaign, you really should look at yourself to figure out what went wrong, rather than looking for outside forces to blame.
Mark Greenan

“The media is going to report on both sides of a political dispute.”

I guess when it comes to a big question like a referendum on our voting system (IMHO, a pretty important part of our democracy, I’d prefer the media INFORM the public, not just report.

Like say, talk to Irish or Australian academics and legislators about STV, check the veracity of arguments used in ads with relevant political science experts.

Had we seen that sort of stuff, I’d heartily criticize anyone who besmirches the good name of BCs media.
avr

Call it “informing” all you like. It’s still clear that you want the public instructed as you might a small child, with didactic lessons intended for them to reach your preferred outcome. For the third time: this is why you lost. Stop treating the electorate like dim-witted children, and accept that your cause simply wasn’t very appealing for voters deciding in good faith.

http://mikepowell.ca Mike Powell

Your point on “complicated explanations” is also well taken.

There are lots of things that we like that are difficult to understand (e.g. pretty much every discussion ever on equalization formulas), but reform advocates need to be much more diligent about not letting opponents make a little more counting complexity seem like more than it is (especially since most people don’t do the actual counting themselves). Really, the first and last message should just be that STV means that you rank the candidates, and your vote goes where it is needed.

More than anything, this just reinforces the power that the status quo has. Short of the hiccups of elections past, it is unlikely that there will be similar opportunities in the future where a referendum’s winning conditions will be as good.
King Rat

The problem, as I see it, with the political prospects for electoral reform is this: Multi-member STV really is the most elegant system of the various proportional systems out there, but it’s not intuitive and it’s complicated to explain. So they’re stuck arguing for a sub-optimal system or getting tangled up in convoluted explanations of surplus votes and fractional weighting.

I also think that advocates for electoral reform, a group of which I am emphatically not a member, are far too quick to dismiss the merits of first-past-the-post, which hinders them in argument simply because they can’t make the case for why their chosen system retains those merits. To forestall the obvious questions, the merits as I see them of the current system are these: One, the connection between the act of voting and the result of the election is extremely clear. If I vote for Joe Smith to be my MP, then if I am in the plurality Joe Smith will be my MP. It is always clear what my vote is for, which is not true in party-list systems (which MP off the list did I vote for?) or the STV (the tipping points, as everyone has noted, are not immediately clear.) Two, first-past-the-post forces parties into broad coalitions before the vote, which leads both to strong governments and to clearer choices before the vote. I realize that many advocates of electoral reform do not like strong government in the sense in which I mean it here, but the second point is I think less discussed. When I vote in the current system for a party, I know what policies they’ve pledged to carry out, and I know that there is a reasonable chance that they will have a chance to implement them. In an electoral system where coalition governments are the norm, you’re voting for a negotiating team, rather than for a platform. There’s nothing undemocratic about that, but it is something that parts of the electorate might very well not like. Third, FPTP allows the electorate to dismiss a government, which is much harder to effect under most forms of PR. You tend to see stable coalitions in most countries that use PR systems, sometimes lasting decades. This, again, could be see as either a positive or a negative thing, but the means of holding an unpopular government to account are much clearer in FPTP than under PR. Fourth and finally, given an equal number of legislators, a FPTP system is always going to allow for smaller and more localized jurisdictions than any other system. The potential benefits and tradeoffs regarding constituency service seem self-evident.

None of this is meant to be dispositive, but I really do think that electoral reform advocates have completely failed to address people’s reluctance to change something that for all the criticism works pretty well and the reasons why people may favour the current system. They have a rather unattractive habit of portraying the current system as undemocratic, which it isn’t, and an equally unattractive habit of portraying all opposition as venally motivated or stupid. Another perception problem they have is the way in which they can come across as partisan operatives for parties that fail to win elections under the current system; it can smack of trying to change the rules simply because you lost the last game.

It seems to me that the best shot electoral reform has is Instant Runoff Voting; it’s a system that isn’t a major change from the current system but that would mean that every legislator had majority support in his riding. It’s also used very successfully in Australia. I personally wouldn’t object to its introduction; it seems to me that it combines the strengths of FPTP with some of the proportionality PR advocates want. But otherwise, I think the tradeoffs of electoral reform outweigh the benefits.

sf

but it’s not intuitive and it’s complicated to explain

I thought it was interesting that Andrew Coyne’s explanation about how simple it was ran for 5 paragraphs and 22 lines of writing.

I can summarize FPTP in one line:
The candidate who gets the most votes wins, and the party that gets the most winning candidates wins.
sf

They have a rather unattractive habit of portraying the current system as undemocratic, which it isn’t

they can come across as partisan operatives for parties that fail to win elections under the current system

I agree on both counts, and if they ever intend to win one of these elections they better steer clear of these issues. I am tired of hearing the argument “it is so hard for us to win a seat”. If that’s your argument, then the trick is to get more votes, not to change the system. It’s like a hockey team that wants to stop playing on ice because they can’t skate. You’re never gonna convince people with that kind of an argument.

http://www.savedarfur.org Sophia Geffros

*sigh*
The question is, what other province can try it? The only other two provinces I can think of where the election results are as consistently crazy as BC’s are Quebec and Ontario. Okay, Alberta. Quebec…. won’t, so let’s give up on that idea right now. Ontario… didn’t. Alberta? Can we talk?

Logician

The Permanent Government of Alberta has no interest in electoral reform. They have rarely demonstrated any interest in the wishes of the majority, and have nonetheless been very successful in maintaining an iron grip on power. Despite only one in five eligible voters actually casting a ballot in their favour, they hold 72 of 83 seats. The larger opposition party has done nothing to make itself seem different from the governing party, and, after a lifetime out of power, has no experience governing.

Change will not come from Alberta in the foreseeable future.

I take some comfort in the belief that the future is not neccessarily foreseeable.

Critical Reasoning

You never know. It looks like the Alberta Liberals will finally wise up and ditch the “Liberal” moniker. If they rename themselves the “Alberta Party”, adopt new centre-right policies, and persuade some high-profile candidates to run, Alberta may finally break free of one-party rule. Stelmach is relatively unpopular for an Alberta premier, and many Conservative voters are unhappy with the status quo.

Canuckistanian

natural resource curse = one-party rule

Gary

The Alberta Tories have won a flat majority of the popular vote in three of the last four elections. That’s how thorough their kind of tyranny is.

sf

In quebec the federalist/separatist option drowns out everything else. But STV or PR will not change that. It’s similar in Northern Ireland, or in other places where the same issue of stay/go exists.

MC

Please allow this Canuck studying government structures in England to add his tuppence.

Paul, you talked about federalism’s role in experimentation. The idea of federalism as a policy Petri dish is compelling, but it just doesn’t seem to fit discussions on the structure of government — in that case, it seems to encourage uniformity. Just look at the US, where 50 states managed to create near-identical government structures, or Canada where the provinces abolished their legislative upper houses.

I think Catherine nailed it with Instant Runoff Voting; it’s important to show that electoral systems aren’t written in stone, and a successful tinkering makes for a much bigger change than a failed overhaul. Having now failed to get even 40% support in PEI, Ontario and now BC, electoral reform advocates will need an entirely new strategy to build support beyond the very few who’ve memorised Duverger’s law. BC was their best chance in decades, and I don’t envy their successors.
http://www.stv.ca Wayne Smith

So once again, one political party has all the power, even though most people voted against them.

Most of us voted for people who did not get elected. Most of us are “represented’ by people we voted against. Most MLAs “represent” mostly people who voted against them.

And apparently, most people in BC think all of that is OK.

I don’t think it’s OK, and I’m not going to stop saying so.

sf

The best way for you to move forward is to understand the arguments of your opponents, if you ever stand a chance of convincing them to change their minds.

Michael

If you assume it is self evident that majority gov’t is always bad and coalitions are always good, best of luck being understood by the electorate..

PolJunkie

Frankly, I’m more interested in the other informal referedum on the carbon tax.
Dennis Prouse

My theory is that the halo from the Citizen’s Assembly wore off. In 2005, when they asked voters to judge the work of the “Citizen’s Assembly”, it all sounded so wonderful and altruistic. Really, who could say no to a Citizen’s Assembly? I would be like voting against that sweet little old lady down the street who volunteers at the church. It was a “Citizen’s Assembly”, after all — they must have got it right.

Four years later, the Citizen’s Assembly was yesterday’s news, and voters could focus on the question itself. It’s my view that the more time you have to think about the STV model proposed in BC, the less sense it makes. That is why I believe it crashed and burned so sharply.
sbt

Maybe it’s time that the democratic reformers accept the fact that Canadians don’t really want to change their electoral system no matter what they tell the pollsters on the phone. Electoral reform went down hard in Ontario and was clearly defeated in BC last night. Maybe it would have been different if the Yes side had used a different colour but I doubt it.
Matthew Fletcher

Another critical problem would seem to be that most of the arguments in favour of electoral reform assume that, and rely upon, most people understanding how the current system works. I think we have a fair degree of evidence, particularly within the last year, that that may not be the case.

Northern PoV

Amen

and the way our brief dalliance with democracy (coalition) was treated by the media and Harper’s thugs has only furthered the misunderstanding

Michael

shoot the messenger. blame the sheep. that should work.

Michael

I see a fair bit of evidence of late that some folks seriously underestimate the resistance to reforms that oppose majority gov’ts and way lyrical about coalitions. At least one pol has completely lost his memory of what his right hand was up to this winter.

http://scottdiatribe.canflag.com Scott Tribe

I cant’ say I disagree with too much of what you say here, Paul. I’ve mused over my way its time for the folks at Fair Vote Canada to rethink their tactics.. as well as open their minds to voting reform models they’ve traditionally refused to even consider – such as Instant Runoff Voting.

Michael

Scott,

One PR hack told me the problem with Instant run off is that it still elects majorities and how would we ever get to PR and coalition building. He wanted to know why any PR supporter should want to improve a system that elects majorities.

The only thing I could suggest that groups that look at incremental changes as barriers to their pet reforms deserve what they get when the public gets the first sniff of their attitude.

http://members.shaw.ca/nspector4 Norman Spector

While political zealots of various varieties–in addition to some journalists and political scientists–will be displeased, most British Columbians were unwilling in today’s economic climate to take a flyer on an arcane voting system. With few if any benefits likely to flow to the first adopter, they’ve made a wide decision. Perhaps Albertans, who have an appetite for this sort of tinkering with our system of government, can be persuaded to serve as Canada’s guinea pigs. Or maybe editorialists at the Toronto Star can persuade Dalton McGunity to make it a two out of three series.

http://members.shaw.ca/nspector4 Norman Spector

Oops–that should be “a wise decision.”
http://scottdiatribe.canflag.com Scott Tribe

Norman, I doubt that would happen (“editorialists at the Toronto Star can persuade Dalton McGunity to make it a two out of three series).. the editorial there after MMP failed was for electoral reform advocates to stop bothering (Ian Urquhart is a rather strong foe against changing the status quo it seems).

Ironically (for me anyhow.. since I consider the paper’s views to be more centrist-right).. .. if any newspaper was going to do that, it would be the Globe and Mail.. who as you probably know has pushed their particular version of a mixed member setup for quite some time.

Michael

Instant runoff is a nice variant of “First past the post” where the post is 50% + 1. It is not anti-majority or pro-coalition. It doesn’t require any changes to our notions of electing an MP or giving mandates to parties.

It doesn’t even require a voter to make 2nd choices. If they want to mark one ‘X’ that should be fine. If they want to vote their preference 1st and rank everyone but the party they don’t want fine as well.

A simple improvement that doesn’t ask me to swap out the status quo for some group’s theory of better gov’t. How many more grand schemes sink before reformers try something small?

I’m tired of hearing my MP doesn’t have a majority of votes. Keep counting MY vote until she does. As for the Lib ad guys whose job it is to scare NDP voters into ‘strategic’ voting, hasta la vista baby.
avr

Advocates of STV, who fancy themselves advocates of greater democracy, must not “give it a rest” or “regroup and try again later” — in British Columbia, they must give up. It’s over.

Does that really seem likely? As with any kind of radical reform to which much of the electorate is indifferent, they’ll just keep demanding to ask the question until the poor dumb proles give the right answer.
http://mikepowell.ca Mike Powell

Instant runoff is a nice first step to STV-like reform, as you adopt the counting system without moving to multi-member constituencies.

Michael

One of the concerns is that it might be the last step as it achieves some of the advertised ends of PR or multi-member STV or MMP without opposing majority gov’t creation . I think that’s a feature not a bug, but perhaps if the low hanging fruit was out of the way PR advocates would do a better job of directly making the case for coalition govt’s. Sharpening their arguments can’t be any worse than the low bridge strategy to date.

Orson Bean

I’m a BC resident, and the ONLY communication, solicitation, etc. that I received from the pro-STV campaign was a robocall with the voice of Rafe Mair supporting the thing a couple of days before the election. And I personally think Rafe Mair is a pompous, histrionic blowhard (though apparently a lot of my fellow BCers think he’s tops). Despite my view of Rafe, I actually voted in favour of STV. On Paul’s question of why it crashed & burned, though, I would add that the Charlottetown Accord referendum back in the 1990s seemed to definitively prove that if people don’t understand something, they’re inclined not to vote in favour of it. The pro-STV campaign never seemed to understand this rather simple, fundamental point. Game over. I still think you could win a referendum on STV, but you would have to run an advertising campaign that managed to distill the essence of what’s good about STV in a short, punchy, digestible way. Like that old rule about being able to pitch a movie idea in 15 seconds on an elevator.
Scott Belyea

I have a feeling that there was another factor, both in BC and in Ontario with MMP – overselling by the advocates of the new.

In both cases, I was left with the feeling that (logical analysis aside) the new couldn’t be quite that good, and the status quo couldn’t be quite that bad. I suppose this is a variant on the truism that “if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is.”
Wotcher?

Having read all the different takes on why the STV proposal was not successful, both from British Columbians and those who are not, as a long-time resident of BC, I would like to weigh in with my take on this.
First of all, let me state that I am in favour of reforming the electoral system into something more resembling proportional representation. But my objection is less with the reform than with the process. And this objection dates back to the first time STV was offered to us.
While the Citizen’s Assembly may well have been widely representative of British Columbians, it still consisted of a group of people being chosen to go off and study the various alternatives available to FPTP (and I understand that there are several viable options) and to select the one they believed was the best. This option was then presented to BC voters as the only one on offer as an alternative to FPTP.
And therein lies the problem, from my perspective. There was no real public engagement or education in or discussion of the various options before narrowing the field down to a votable few.
The arguments for and against that were put forward both, in my view, made valid points, but I was left asking whether there was something better out there. Neither side really convinced me, and I was still undecided when I walked into the voting booth yesterday.
In my view, this referendum does not have to be tied to a general election, but should come at the end of full public discussion, led, not by ads, but by a non- or bi-partisan panel. There can even be more than one public referendum to narrow the field. I think the issue is important enough to warrent this kind of full public attention.
Finally (and I don’t usually go on this long), to objections that this process would be very expensive, I would say that I would rather spend money on something useful like this than on a general federal election every year or two.
Cheers.
Mulletaur

“Advocates of electoral reform elsewhere have to ask themselves serious questions about what went wrong in BC.”

Um, it was a bad idea and the electorate rejected it ? Seems pretty clear to me.