Dear Democratic Reform Supporters:
We hope you’ve been having a wonderful summer. As our thoughts turn towards fall activities, we have several exciting upcoming events to share with you.
Save the Date! Announcing Our Next E-volving Democracy Dialogue on ‘Engaging Citizens’, Together With Our AGM

AGM Announcement; Self-Nominations Invited for Board of Directors
Immediately following the Dialogue, we will hold a short Annual General Meeting at which we will elect our Board of Directors. Fair Voting BC is governed by a group of ten volunteer directors drawn from all around the province and from all partisan backgrounds (including non-partisans) who meet by teleconference one evening per month (1-2 hours). We are currently soliciting self-nominations for these positions. If you are enthusiastic about working to bring about important democratic reforms in BC, we’d love to have you consider joining us – to learn more, please send us a note.
Fair Voting BC Submits Argument to BC Court of Appeal in Gag Law Reference Case
We expect to hear responses from the Attorney General and the Amicus this coming week, and the case will be heard in court from September 10th-12th. The case is open to the public, so we invite anyone who is interested to attend (10am-4pm each day in the Vancouver Courthouse). If anyone would like to serve as an official observer for Fair Voting BC, please let us know so that we can schedule you in.
BC Initiates Internet Voting Review; Fair Voting BC Urges Caution
Fair Voting BC believes that internet voting is the wrong answer to the wrong question. If the central question is how to improve democratic engagement, a much better step for governments to take would be to provide meaningful mechanisms for citizens to participate in initiating and reviewing proposed legislation; online processes could certainly play a significant role in such initiatives. And, of course, we should adopt a new voting system that would ensure that our votes are accurately translated into legislative seats.
Internet voting may sound attractive, but voting online is much harder than banking online – with banking, you can always check your balance, but with voting, our ballot is supposed to be secret, which means the link between the ballot and our identity as a voter must be intentionally broken, which makes it practically impossible to verify correct ballot handling. All professional computer science organizations that have taken a stand on internet voting (as well as some online voting service providers) have opposed the use of internet voting for high-stakes public elections. As the review gets underway this September, Fair Voting BC will be seeking to appear before the panel to argue that our highest priority should be to safeguard the integrity of BC’s elections.
(Note: earlier this month, the NDP dropped its investigation into who was responsible for the Denial of Service attack on their online leadership vote last spring; there are no reliable estimates for how many voters were unable to vote because of that attack).
International Democracy Week
The Small Donor Revolution Won’t Be Televised – Smart, Creative Ideas About Campaign Financing
The Huffington Post recently published a fascinating article on how New York City has created incentives for political parties and candidates to reach out to a more diverse set of donors. The idea is quite simple – the city provides a 6-to-1 match on donations up to $175. A 2010 report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law shows what a dramatic difference this multiple match on small donations has made: it has led to more competition, more small donors, more impact from small contributions, more grass roots campaigning, and more citizen participation in campaigns. All this, while simultaneously reducing the influence of big money in general and corporate money in particular. Time to consider something similar for Canada?
New Zealand Reviews Mixed Member Proportional Voting System
That’s all for now. We hope to see many of you at our AGM. If you enjoy our newsletters, please take a moment to pass them on to someone you know and invite them to sign up themselves at our main website (fairvotingbc.com) – just ask them to click the ‘Get Our Monthly Newsletter’ button at the top of the right column on our home page. The possibility of reform grows as more people understand the issues – please help us spread the word.
Yours for a stronger democracy,
Antony Hodgson
President, Fair Voting BC