As we did in 2008, Fair Voting BC is again asking candidates for civic office to take a stand on the need for democratic reforms at the municipal level.  This year’s questions include the following:

1. Do you commit yourself, if elected, to renewing in the first year of your term the city’s long-standing request for Victoria to grant local governments the power to choose our own voting system?
2. If elected, will you endorse expanded use of deliberative dialogue approaches (similar to the Mayor’s Advisory Council in Vancouver) to generate future policy options?
3. Which of the following best describes your view of the benefits of online (internet) voting?
1. Online voting is proven to substantially improve democratic engagement
2. Online voting has good potential to improve democratic engagement
3. Online voting is unlikely to significantly change democratic engagement
4. Which of the following best describes your attitude towards the security issues related to online voting?
1. Online voting is now sufficiently robust and secure to be used in civic elections
2. Online voting is relatively secure and may be valuable for consulting citizens, but is probably too insecure to be relied on for civic elections
3. Online voting is currently too vulnerable to undetectable fraud to be used in a civic election
5. Please comment on what democracy-related issues most concern you (e.g., voting, campaign financing, citizen engagement, etc.).
6. If you are a current council member, please highlight any democracy-related initiatives you or your party has undertaken in the past term.
7. If elected, what do you personally commit yourself to doing during the coming council term to promote democratic reform?

We will be collecting responses until the end of the first week in November, at which point we will be distributing candidates’ responses to our supporters and to the media via a press release.  At the moment, we are specifically inviting candidates in Vancouver to respond to this survey, but we encourage our supporters to volunteer to solicit responses from candidates in their own towns and cities around BC.  Please send an email to info@fairvotingbc.com if you would like to help us in this effort – we can easily set up a custom SurveyMonkey survey for you and give you a link to distribute to your local candidates which will allow you to collect their responses automatically.