The Committee for Voting Equity in BC (Equity BC)

On May 12th, 2009, British Columbians vote on the following referendum question: Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform? Yes / No

The Citizens' Assembly, appointed by the BC government, found that our current voting system under which a party that gets half the votes may well get all the seats in the legislature, needs improvement.

They recommended a change to an electoral system called the single transferable vote, and developed a version adapted to British Columbia called BC-STV. BC-STV was chosen by the Citizens' Assembly for fair and proportional results, enhanced local representation, greater voter choice and, as a consequence, better government. Details of their findings are available at: http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public

For voters, the change is simple and straightforward: Under BC-STV, instead of marking an “X” next to one candidate, voters vote for as many candidates as they wish, in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, etc.

The method of counting the ballots with BC-STV is somewhat involved, but for those interested in the details it is described at the government site: http://www.gov.bc.ca/referendum_info/popt/electoral_systems_first_past_the_post/counting_the_votes.htm

Comments from Maxwell Anderson, Chair, Committee for Voting Equity in BC:

"The basic idea behind BC-STV is that it does a more reliable job of translating votes into seats in the legislature; it more accurately reflects the voters' intentions in electing MLAs than does our present voting system.

There have been long lists of pragmatic reasons given for voting in favour of BC-STV (e.g. www.stvforbc.com) and for voting against it (e.g. www.knowstv.ca). Why am I supporting BC-STV? Here are my personal top three issues:

1) To have better options available at elections we need to foster better political parties. How? We need to give parties smaller than the two biggest parties a fair chance to capture a few seats, because innovative ideas and competitive pressure come from small parties. They'll keep our big parties honest and hard working.

2) To make better decisions at election time we need to foster a more informed electorate. At present, about half the votes don't make a difference; they're 'wasted'. We need a system where almost every vote influences who gets elected, so we don't feel we may be wasting our time learning the issues and going out to vote. Then we'll take our responsibility to study the issues more seriously and we'll become better voters.

3) To avoid government blunders like the fast ferry fiasco caused by premiers trying to make more decisions than they are capable of, we need to disperse the over-arching power of the premier's office among a team of competent leaders. How? By changing, at least part of the time, from single-party majority to coalition majority governments.

These are complicated issues, but the Citizens' Assembly members and political scientists are virtually unanimous that BC-STV is highly likely to bring about all three of these improvements over the long term.

Sincerely, Maxwell Anderson"

EVENT: November 10th, 2007:  Fall 2007 Electoral Reform Conference at UBC by Fair Voting BC, see: http://fairvotingbc.com/node/24

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To contact us, e-mail Info@EquityBC.org