Attorney General David Eby released the finishing touches Wednesday on the government’s plan to herd B.C. voters toward the NDP and Greens’ predetermined conclusion that the voting system needs to be changed.
The setup of the referendum question on electoral reform works in favour of change, rather than the status quo. The government is setting the ground rules to its liking.
Now the party, together with the Greens, will campaign in favour of change. Those dubious about the alternatives are trying to mount a rebellion based on gaps in the explanation of how it would work. But knocking the NDP-Green proportional representation train off the rails looks to be a big job.
Starting last fall, the government retained full control of the process, rather than handing it off to an independent body for a nonpartisan study. Most of decisions since then are tainted by the fact that the government is trying to portray itself as impartially running a referendum to settle a question on which it’s already made up its mind.
The approval threshold for such a change, which once included the need for broad-based support in many ridings, was reduced to a simple provincewide majority. So the different regional viewpoints about the voting system matter much less.
Then Premier John Horgan signalled that he might change his mind on it being a single question. That was confirmed Wednesday when the ballot was unveiled. It has two questions, one of which has three options. That could skew the result toward yes, rather than no.
The first question is about whether to change systems. The second offers three options (selected by Eby) to be voted preferentially, until one gets majority support. Presuming most “no” voters on the first question will pass on the second, the potential winner might be picked by a scant minority of overall voters.
Just to keep focus on the topic, if the NDP wins the day and the system changes, Eby is also recommending another referendum after two elections under proportional representation. That would determine if people want to revert to the traditional model. It’s a fail-safe mechanism, if the new system turns out to be a disaster. It would be the fourth referendum in seven election cycles going back to 2005.
If nothing else, that would make B.C. a world-leading centre of excellence for the study of mixed-member, dual-member, rural-urban, flexible-district, single-transferable and first-past-the-post voting systems.
Opposition Liberals say the persistent nudges toward a yes vote represent the NDP trying to keep the Green caucus happy, in return for keeping them in power. But the NDP committed to a referendum — and to campaigning in favour of change — well before it needed the Greens. Greens are delighted with the process to date, because almost any proportional-representation system would vastly increase their seat count.
The confidence agreement under which they operate binds both parties to “campaign actively in support of the agreed-upon form of proportional representation.” But there was no word Wednesday if they’ve agreed on which of the three options they’ll be backing, or how they’ll go about agreeing.
It will depend on answers to a number of questions. Voters will face those questions as well. Boundaries are one example. Some of the options mean redrawing the electoral districts, but there isn’t enough time to produce maps showing what will happen.
So voters will mail in their ballots this fall with only an approximate understanding of how their ridings might change.
The government outlined the three proposed voting systems and listed more than a dozen remaining questions about them, some of them significant. The answers will come from an all-party legislative committee. But, crucially, those answers won’t come until after the referendum.
People wary of gaps like those will be dwelling on them this fall, but it’s still going to be an uphill struggle.
Just So You Know: There’s one finding from the government’s own public-engagement process that undercuts their drive toward changing to proportional representation. The list of values that people hold most dear when it comes to voting systems puts “easy to understand” slightly ahead of the desire to see parties represented in the house according to their share of the vote. And the common feature of the three models is their complexity.
