i 1

flectoral Reform Misses the Point

   

RIGHT HOOK

as McCullough, OP Columnist

—

s you may have heard, when we
A go to the polls for the May 18th
provincial election we’ll actually
be voting twice. Along with electing mem-
bers of the provincial parliament, we'll be
voting on a referendum asking if we want
to change BC’s electoral system.
Specifically, we'll be asked if we want to
change our present voting system to the
“STV electoral system as recommended
by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral
Reform.” I’m voting no.
Now, as you'll remember if you read
that little interview thing I did a few weeks

ago, I was very excited and encouraged by
Premier Campbell’s decision to assemble
a citizens’ assembly” to address the flaws
and merits of our current electoral sys-
tem. The idea of appointing 161 ordinary
British Columbians from across the
province to freely debate and discuss
political reform was a truly creative and
revolutionary idea. Whatever his other
faults may be, Campbell deserves honest
praise for being courageous enough to
follow through with the bold plan.

That being said, while the citizen
assembly was a nice forum for discussion,
it was hardly inevitable that the 161 mem-
bers would come up with a good
recommendation for change. Their deci-
sion to recommend the so-called “single
transferable vote” (STV) system to the
province is deeply flawed, and indeed
even somewhat baffling. The committee
that was supposed to represent the voices
of “average” British Columbians have in
turn suggested a solution to our voting
woes that is so complex and sophisticated
it requires a team of political scientists to
successfully explain it. The decision was
clearly spurned on by the council’s
egghead academic “advisors,” and was
almost certainly not one that the commit-

tee members would have ever reached
independently. The whole thing reeks of a
political fad.

A good rule of thumb in life is to
never sign, or vote for, anything you don’t
understand. ’'m majoring in political sci-
ence, and I still don’t fully understand the
STV system. For a while I was thinking it
would be cute if sometime before the
election I could do a special feature for
the OP explaining the STV system using
little cartoon illustrations. But the damned
system is so complicated even cartoons
can’t explain it. It cannot be simplified, it’s
just that bizarre. Trying to describe it in
less than a thousand words is hopelessly
misleading—while accurately describing it
with more than a thousand words is
migraine-inducing.

I don’t know if you ever watch South
Park, but there was this one episode
where there were a gang of gnomes who
stole underpants from children at night.
When asked to explain why they did it, the
Gnomes replied “profit.” When asked to
explain the plan in greater detail, the
Gnomes replied “Stage one: get under-
pants. Stage two: ... Stage three: profit!”
It’s the same with STV. Stage one: Rank all
the candidates in order of preference.

Stage two: .... Stage three: peo-

 

Editorial Cartoon

AIR INDIA INVESTIGATION

MEMBERSHIP IN

artim

this is harder
than it looks!

CONNECTING THE DOTS
ON BAGRI AND MALIK

8 | www.theotherpress.ca

 

ple are elected and somehow
everything ends up being more
fair and democratic than it is
now.

I won’t attempt to criticize
the bizarre mathematical calcu-
lating system that STV uses to
elect people via numerical
rankings, because as I said, I
don’t understand it. What I will
criticize, however, is the STV
gimmick that may soon force
us to elect multiple MLAs in
each riding. Apparently, some
ridings will have up to seven
MLAs in all, should this system
be implemented. Now, I live in
Coquitlam, which is a fairly
large community. Let’s say my
riding will have four MLAs
under STV, which seems possi-
ble. If I want to be an
informed voter, I should know
the names of the candidates
running for the two major par-
ties, the NDP and the Liberals.
Let’s say I also want to be
open-minded, so I try to learn
the names of all the Green
party people running as well. If
there are four seats up for

 

grabs that’s already 12 candidates to keep
track of. Worst of all, parties will be able
to run multiple candidates in ridings, so my
riding could easily have six Liberals, seven
NDPs, and five Greens, all engaged in
some huge political battle royale. It’s hard
enough just remembering where the party
leaders stand on the issues, let alone an
endless parade of MLA candidates. At
best, under such a system I imagine citi-
zens would just blindly vote for any guy
with “NDP” or “Liberal” beside his
name, with little thought being given
towards the personality of the candidates
themselves. When you have over a dozen
people running, it’s hard to develop an
intimate relationship with any of them, a
far cry from the claim that STV will some-
how create more “community-centric”
MLAs. If anything, voting patterns will
simply become more mindlessly partisan
out of sheer confusion.

Our current first-past-the-post elec-
toral system is far from perfect. In the last
election alone, something like 30 percent
of our MLAs were elected with only a
plurality of the popular vote, meaning
that many men and women are sitting in
Victoria despite the fact that most mem-
bers of their ridings didn’t want them
there. Though this is obviously a problem,
I’ve never understood why the only “solu-
tion” is to radically change our entire
electoral system with all this STV/propor-
tional-representation nonsense. When
your house has a broken window, you try
to fix it; you don’t buy a new house. If no
candidate can manage to win a majority of
the popular vote in a riding, why not sim-
ply have a second run-off election
immediately after, in which only the “top
two” candidates are allowed to run? This
system is used in many countries all over
the world—noticeably in France and
many US states—and is very simple for
voters to understand. Critics will often
suggest that voting a second time is too
much of a hassle, but honestly, we vote,
like, twice every four years. If you consid-
er voting one more time “fatiguing,” then
maybe you shouldn’t bother voting at all.

In the end, however, tinkering with the
electoral system is really little more than
an amusing distraction. Although it’s clear
Campbell’s heart was in the right place
when he devised the “citizens’ assembly,”
making the council’s mandate “electoral
reform” was, in retrospect, a mistake.
When it comes to elements of our current
political system that trouble average vot-
ers, I imagine “how the ballots look” is
pretty far down on the ol’ priority scale.

March 23/2005