The votes have been tallied, the 2017 election results are final and we’re in the same position we were in on election night. B.C. is marching — or stumbling — into uncharted territory.
Even the way we vote is in danger of changing without our consent, and that must not happen.
Despite all the drama, the absentee ballots didn’t change the seat totals. The B.C. Liberals have 43, the New Democrats 41 and the Green Party three. What happens now is largely in the hands of a climate scientist with relatively little political experience: Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver.
Weaver has been negotiating with Liberal Leader Christy Clark and NDP Leader John Horgan since election night, but if he has made a decision on which way to jump, he hasn’t let it slip.
That decision, when it becomes public, will reveal much about Weaver and his party. It will tell us about his political skills, his principles, his priorities and his future. And our future.
While the Green Party’s options and its demands have been explored in great detail in these pages and elsewhere over the past three weeks, much depends on the other two parties. Clark and Horgan must decide what they are willing to give up to secure power with Green support.
The NDP is much closer ideologically to the Greens than the Liberals are, which puts the odds in its favour, but is no guarantee. If the Greens make a formal or informal alliance with the NDP, it makes electoral reform much more likely, as both parties have supported it.
The possibilities are enough to give political scientists goosebumps. Voters, however, are looking for more than intellectual thrills. They want to know who is running the province, and they want to know soon.
There are suggestions we might have answers on Wednesday, 22 days after the election. That’s a long delay by B.C. standards, but it could be good training for us in case we choose to switch to proportional representation. Waiting for a coalition to form could become a normal part of post-election life.
If it does become a normal part of life, however, all of us must be able to take part in that decision. As the leaders bargain, electoral reform deserves a special place in their deliberations. It is not like the other policies that go into the current horse-trading.
Our voting system is the soil from which every other system and policy grows. Change the way we vote and you change the province. Some of those changes are predictable, and many will be unforeseen.
Any reform that profound must not be imposed. British Columbians must be allowed to vote on it.
No, we didn’t vote for it on May 9. We voted for various parties for a multitude of different reasons. The election results did not stamp approval on any individual party policy.
If the Greens and NDP believe that every person’s voice should count at election time, then how much more important is it that those voices be heard on this fundamental question?
Those who argue that voters don’t understand or have experience of proportional representation are simply saying they know better than their benighted fellow citizens. That’s not democracy. In elections, we often vote on complicated issues; it’s our responsibility to educate ourselves and cast an informed ballot.
The parties can bargain their other policies to their hearts’ content, but there must be no electoral reform without a referendum.
