Posted August 23, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Referendum
Public Eye has an article about a joint letter by the chief proponent and opponent of the BC-STV referendum about why they should be entitled to receive the full $500,000 to spend each.
It will be interesting to see if any other (credible) group will come out to try to claim some of the (essentially free) money being offered by the government.
Posted August 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Referendum
Fair Voting BC’s Wendy Bergerud had a conversation with Harry Neufeld, the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections BC about the proposed BC-STV boundaries. He notes that the BC-STV maps are provisional and have not been hard-coded in legislation. Presumably if the 2009 referendum passes the 60/60 threshold, they will.
Neufeld is quoted as follows:
The issue of ‘official’ BC-STV maps is somewhat up in the air. As you may know if you followed the debate on Bill 19 (Electoral Districts Act) and Bill 6 (Electoral Reform Referendum 2009 Act), there was no discussion held on what the proposed BC-STV map would be as a result of adopting an altered version of the Commission’s recommendations. One might infer that an 85-member, 20-district BC-STV map per Appendix P of the Commission’s amendment report is what was intended by legislators. However, to date there is no official endorsement in the form of a debate, resolution, statute or regulation indicating what boundaries would be used if the referendum resulted in BC-STV becoming the electoral system employed for the 2013 provincial general election.
That being said, a (probable) province-wide BC-STV map based on ‘Appendix P’ can be accessed at:
http://bc-ebc.ca/files/mirror2/appendix/pdf/appendix_P_bc-stv_20districts_48×36.pdf
As readers may know, I am a proponent of the BC-STV system, although I do not believe it will pass the mandatory threshold, which is 60% of the popular vote province-wide, in addition to having a simple majority in 60% of the seats. The simple majority criterion is easier to achieve than the 60% popular vote as “random voters” tend to dilute the electoral sample space significantly as this will force a regression to 50%.
Kamloops and Kamloops-North Thompson were the only two electoral districts that (narrowly) voted against BC-STV in the 2005 referendum.
Posted August 2, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Referendum
The ministry of the Attorney General announced through a press release proposed rules. Each side will receive $500,000 in funding and there can be a maximum of five groups on each side of the debate.
The draft rules are in the consultation paper attached to the PR.
It’s probably in the best interests of both sides of the debate that each group gets the chunk of $500,000, although the draft rules will encourage others to take a slide of the pie. Fair Voting BC is a likely candidate for the proponent group, while Bill Tieleman and Bud Smith’s cleverly named KnowSTV is likely to apply for the “no” side.
$500,000 on each side is not likely to make a material impact on the vote (considering the province-wide nature of the referendum) but both groups will love to spend public tax dollars on this.
Posted May 23, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Referendum
On Friday, the question on the referendum was finalized. It will be:
Which electoral system should British Columbia use to elect members to the provincial Legislative Assembly?
• The existing electoral system (First-Past-the-Post)
• The single transferable vote electoral system (BC-STV) proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform
In 2005, the question was:
Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform?
• Yes
• No
This is a very subtle shift in that proponents or opponents cannot simply say “Vote YES” to this or “Vote NO” to that, which is a much easier marketing message than saying “Vote for BC-STV”. The acronym is much more difficult to remember.
This was reflected by Attorney General Wally Oppal in the May 23, 2008 morning debate:
The question is different from that in 2005 in that it removes some language that we heard was perceived as biased in favour of a yes vote — particularly words like “change” and “recommended by.” In addition to a number of complaints received during and after the 2005 referendum that the question was not as neutrally worded as it could be, a post-referendum study by the NRG Research Group queried the neutrality of the question.
This is very correct and all things being equal, will likely result in a lesser result for the STV. Right now I think it will be very close to 50/50.