As we head into the last week of this year’s municipal campaign, we wanted to share with you our report card on the Vancouver candidates’ positions on voting reform.  In partnership with our friends at the Fair Vote Canada Vancouver chapter, we invited all candidates for mayor and council to respond to a survey asking whether they (1) support the City of Vancouver switching to a more proportional voting system, (2) support expanding the voting systems that Vancouver and other BC cities are allowed to choose from (which we refer to as “Local Choice”, and (3) oppose a single-member ward system for Vancouver.

Mayoral Candidates

We received responses from the mayoral candidates shown in the table below (no responses from Ken Sim (ABC) or Fred Harding (NPA)). We have colour-coded the responses related to support for Proportional Representation or Local Choice, as these are key issues for municipal reform.

Note on the Wards Issue: We asked candidates for their position on switching to the ward system since mayor Kennedy Stewart has promised to do this if re-elected. “Wards” typically refers to single member districts elected using a standard first-past-the-post ballot, so they have all the same representational problems as First Past the Post used for provincial and federal elections. There is debate as to whether or not wards would be an improvement over the current At Large Block Voting system that Vancouver uses (there are pros and cons either way), but they would certainly not be proportional in and of themselves, so most electoral reform advocates consider them at best a “lateral move”, as OneCity puts it. We are concerned that introducing wards could stall future progress towards voting reform, so we are generally opposed to making this change now, and have therefore included candidates’ positions for your consideration.

Overall, only some of the independent candidates earn A-level grades here (A+ to Raunet and Popat, who have actively advocated for voting reform in the past and A- to Shottha), with Kennedy Stewart (Forward Together) and Mark Marissen (Progress Vancouver) having some positive elements (both indicate an openness to change in the future, but this should be balanced against the consideration that Stewart, in particular, has been mayor for four years and did relatively little on this file; he certainly did not invest any political capital in moving the discussion forward). Colleen Hardwick and her TEAM are solidly opposed to more inclusive voting systems, advocating instead for creating a network of neighbourhood councils.

Council Candidates

Responses from candidates for city council are shown below. If a party responded on behalf of all its members, we show the party name (plus the party’s mayoral candidate’s last name, if applicable). If a candidate responded on their own behalf and they were the only representative of their party, we show their name along with their party affiliation (including independents).

Our Top Choices

Overall, OneCity, the Green Party, and COPE emerge as our top choices in terms of party commitment. These parties have a history of advocacy for electoral reform, along with clear commitments to a range of positive democratic reforms in their party platforms. As mentioned above, some individuals from COPE offered additional personal comments in favour of reform. Some specific candidates from other parties, including Lesli Boldt (Vision), and Alvin Singh and Tessica Truong (Forward Together) have previously advocated for voting and other democratic reforms. Other parties and candidates, as indicated above, have indicated support for our key requests, but have not had a similar history of advocacy.

Worthy of Consideration

The Affordable Housing Coalition, Forward Together (as a party), and Progress Vancouver are worthy of consideration. AHC generally expresses support for wards with proportional voting, though it’s a bit unclear how they imagine this working. Forward Together wishes to move towards wards now, but expresses openness to considering proportional representation in future, though they didn’t lay out a plan for when or how they would do this. Progress Vancouver is likewise open to considering such a system, but did not lay out a plan or timetable for achieving it.

Not Recommended

Based on TEAM‘s opposition to reform, as well as the presence of No campaign activist Bill Tieleman on their slate of candidates, we recommend against supporting any of the TEAM candidates. We have had no response from Ken Sim (A Better City) or Fred Harding (NPA), so cannot recommend them either.

We hope you find this analysis helpful as you consider how to cast your vote in the coming days.

Yours for a stronger democracy,

Antony Hodgson
President, Fair Voting BC

As we head into tonight’s English language debate, we wanted to share with you our report card on the federal parties’ platforms regarding electoral reform.  As you can see in the table below, three of the parties (the Liberals, Conservatives and People’s Party) are essentially missing in action on this file.  In our opinion, only the NDP and the Green Party have positions that could be considered acceptable to democratic reform supporters.  Though there are some differences between the positions of these two parties that we discuss below, we can endorse both of them based on their overall positions.

Our Top Choice:  The Green Party of Canada

Overall, we consider the Green Party to have the strongest position on voting reform of all the parties.  On their website‘s page entitled “Demand Democratic Reform”, they say that “Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system must go” and they “demand proportional representation because Canadians want a fair electoral system.”  On pages 90-92 of their platform, they call for a National Citizens’ Assembly to consider how to modernize our voting system, as well as several other proposed reforms such as lowering the voting age and mandatory and online voting.  In addition, they propose related reforms such as restoring the per-vote subsidy and implementing “truth in advertising” rules for political advertising, as well as various initiatives related to integrity, ethics and transparency.  Our only small concern is that they do not explicitly state a commitment to implement any recommendation from the Citizens’ Assembly directly and without a referendum (we would consider a referendum to be not only unnecessary, but ill-advised, as we believe that voters have a right to be represented in Parliament by an MP of their own choosing and that this right should not be denied to them based on a referendum).  Unfortunately, the Green Party is not running candidates in all ridings, so not all voters may have an opportunity to vote for a Green Party candidate. 

Second Place: The New Democratic Party

The NDP also has a strong position on voting reform.  On pages 103-106 of their platform, they say that “A New Democrat government will bring in mixed-member proportional representation that works for Canada – and we will do it in our first mandate in government. We’ll establish an independent citizen’s assembly to recommend the best way to put it in place for the next election to ensure both local representation and a federal government that reflects the voters’ choice of parties. Once Canadians have the opportunity to experience the new voting system and compare it to the old one, we will hold a referendum to confirm the choice.”  In addition, they propose several other reforms, including lowering the voting age, addressing conflict of interest, and banning cash for access events, amongst others.  Our main concern with the NDP’s platform is that they have already decided that they wish to implement a mixed-member model and that they wish a National Citizens’ Assembly to focus more on how to put it in place rather than considering whether this model is the best choice for Canada in the first place (though MP Daniel Blaikie did take the lead in introducing and passing a motion in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs calling for a study on establishing a National Citizens’ Assembly to investigate electoral reforms without specifying any limitations on what reforms would be considered).  We are also concerned that the NDP is willing to endorse a referendum following introduction of a reformed voting system, as we do not believe that voters’ right to representation should be able to be removed by a referendum. 

Not Endorsed:  The Liberal, Conservative, and People’s Parties 

None of the other three parties that are polling above a couple of percentage points have anything meaningful to say about voting reform – essentially ignoring the issue in their platforms.  The Liberals, of course, famously promised that 2015 would be the last election run under the First Past the Post voting system, only to renege on that promise. The only small positive for the Liberals is that their members on the Procedure and House Affairs committee did endorse Daniel Blaikie’s motion to study establishing a National Citizens’ Assembly, which we believe is critical to re-establishing public dialogue about voting reform.  The Conservative members of the PHA committee voted against supporting the proposed study of a National Citizens’ Assembly.  

We hope you find this analysis helpful as you consider how to cast your vote in the next couple of weeks.

Yours for a stronger democracy,

Antony Hodgson
President, Fair Voting BC

What a night last night! Now that it’s clear that the final result won’t be known until about May 22-24, we have a moment to reflect on what has happened so far and to speculate about the future. Here are some things we know for sure:

Half the Voters Are Still Unrepresented

BC voters cast just under 1.8 million votes last night. About 910,000 were cast for elected MLAs, while 890,000 were cast for candidates who did not win election. This means that barely half the voters (<51% of us) are represented by an MLA we support. This is par for the course for First-Past-the-Post voting.

Swing Ridings Rule the Day

17 of the province’s 87 ridings had a winning margin of under 10%, and 7 had a margin of under 5%. This means that most ridings (70 of the 87) were pretty safe bets for the winning party. Indeed, of the 75 ridings whose names stayed the same since the last election, only 14 changed hands this election, with an average vote shift of only 7%. As we all know, currently only 9 votes stand between a minority government, possibly led by the NDP, and a majority government led by the Liberals. Indeed, a swing of under 500 votes (e.g., in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, Richmond-Queensborough and Vancouver-False Creek) could mean the difference between a Liberal majority and an NDP majority, despite neither party having more than 40% of the vote. A proportional voting system would be much less sensitive to small vote shifts – to swing an election from a 50-40 majority to a 40-50 outcome would require a vote swing of more like 85,000 votes here in BC.

A Majority Wants Electoral Reform

Close to 57% of voters cast their votes for parties that explicitly promised to take steps to introduce proportional representation before the next election. Even if the Liberal Party ends up winning this election, this is an important milestone.

“Us vs Them”: Exaggerated Regional Differences

The seat map is striking – the NDP won almost all the seats on Vancouver Island and across the central parts of Greater Vancouver, while the Liberal Party won all the seats in the eastern Fraser Valley and almost all the seats in the Interior. Does this reflect how people voted? Not at all. The NDP took two-thirds of the seats in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island on 40-45% of the vote in these regions, while the Liberal Party took over 85% of the seats in the eastern Fraser Valley and the Interior on just over 50% of the vote. But in all these regions, the second party had close to 30% of the vote (and the Liberals had close to 40% in Greater Vancouver). Why should these voters not have an MLA who shares their political perspective? Such exaggeration is damaging to our ability to make good provincial policy decisions. Whoever forms government needs to hear from voices across the province. First-Past-the-Post silences those voices.

More Women Elected

The number of women in the BC Legislature increased slightly, from 31 of 85 to 33 of 87 (36.5% to 38%), which is a higher percentage than any other legislature in Canada (Ontario is second at 35%). Women represented 41% of the Liberal Party candidates, 51% of the NDP candidates and 38% of the Green Party candidates. This percentage is up by 10% on average over the 2013 numbers for the Liberal Party and NDP. However, women won only 30%, 46% and 33% of those parties’ seats, respectively, suggesting that perhaps the parties tended to place women in less winnable ridings (the Liberal Party’s gap of 10% suggests that they may have done this to a somewhat greater extent than the other two, who had only a 5% gap each). Nonetheless, the increase does confirm the importance of increasing the number of women nominated. But we can do better – some forms of proportional representation (e.g., STV) would ensure that virtually all ridings would be competitive, so we could remove that largely invisible barrier of ‘unwindable’ ridings.

Higher Voter Turnout

Another slightly bright spot was the (estimated) improvement in voter turnout – currently estimated at about 57% (up from 55% in 2013, and from 51% in 2009, but it hasn’t been above 60% since 1991 (64%)).

More Indigenous MLAs

The election of Adam Olsen (GP) and Eliss Ross (LP) brings the total number of indigenous MLAs to 4 (joining Melanie Mark and Carole James of the NDP). [CBC story]

What Now?

While we wait for the final outcome of last night’s election to be decided, we will be hard at work preparing our Charter challenge, in which we will argue that our current voting system violates our charter rights to effective representation and equal treatment. So far, we have pledges of over $135,000 towards our goal of $360,000. Please help us reach this goal!

Dear Democratic Reform Supporters:

We apologize in advance for a somewhat longer article than usual.  If you’re short on time, check out the executive summary and the graphs below:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY – Reality Check Shows PM’s Claims Are Incorrect

The Prime Minister recently argued that the reason he called for a longer campaign was because the other parties are already campaigning on the public dime, implying that the Conservatives weren’t (at least, not to the same extent), stating that he thinks the parties should operate on their own resources and not rely on the taxpayer.  

However, Fair Voting BC’s analysis shows that the Conservatives receive a greater public subsidy than any other party ($55-75M in the past year, vs ~$35M for the Liberals and $25M for the NDP), raise a greater fraction of their total budget from public sources than the other parties (88-91%, vs 86-87% for the Liberals and NDP), and are expected to receive a much greater public subsidy per expected vote than the other parties ($12-17, vs $9 for the Liberals and $5 for the NDP).  

Our verdict:  the Conservative Party is securing more public support in both absolute and relative terms than the other major federal parties.  Read on for the details.

Update: some of the sources we consulted to write this article did not list the numbers for the Green Party.  We have therefore not been able to come up with as reliable an estimate for their subsidies as for the other parties, but have added those figures we have been able to ascertain. 

FAIR VOTING BC REALITY CHECK

PM Says Parties Should Operate Without Subsidies: When Prime Minister Harper called the election this past Sunday, “[h]e was quickly peppered with media questions about why he was subjecting Canadians to a campaign that promises to be the longest in more than a century and the costliest in the country’s political history.  Simple, Harper replied: Conservative rivals are already campaigning, and they’re doing it on the public dime.”

He went on to explain: “If we’re going to begin our campaigns and run our campaigns, that those campaigns need to be conducted under the rules of the law, that the money come from the parties themselves, not from the government resources, parliamentary resources or taxpayer resources.  What we do by calling this campaign is making sure we are all operating within the rules and not using taxpayers’ money directly.”

So, is the Prime Minister right to imply that the Conservative Party is much less reliant on public subsidies than the other parties, given that the Conservative Party has phased out the per-vote subsidy and expanded the spending limits for campaigns lasting longer than 37 days?  Fair Voting BC is pleased to present a reality check [CBC asks a similar question].

Forms of Public Subsidy:  Federal parties have historically received three forms of subsidies:  (1) the per-vote subsidy, (2) tax credits to donors, and (3) reimbursement of 50-60% of campaign expenses (expenses incurred during a writ period).  In addition, the government benefits from control over government advertising resources.

1. Per-Vote Subsidy:  The Conservative Party has benefitted more than the other parties from the per-vote subsidy, receiving close to $100M from this source since 2004 (when it was implemented to compensate parties for losing access to corporate and union donations), while the Liberal Party has received about $75M, the NDP about $55M, and the Green Party about $12M.  While the last per-vote subsidy payment was issued in spring 2015, these payments have certainly contributed significantly to the ‘war-chests’ of the various parties that they will be drawing on in this election campaign.

2. Tax Credits to Donors:  When taxpayers give political parties $1.00, they are reimbursed up to $0.75, which can make the net cost to the taxpayer as little as $0.25.  On average, parties receive $2 from the public purse for every $1 in net contributions from individual donors.  In 2009, this subsidy totalled $30M for all parties [Wikipedia].  In 2014, the top three parties reported raising $20M (CP), $15M (LP) and $9.5M (NDP), so the corresponding public subsidies were on the order of $13M (CP), $10M (LP) and $6M (NDP).

3. Reimbursement of Campaign Expenses:  The third main way in which the public subsidizes parties is by reimbursing over 50% of their campaign expenses.

Estimating War-Chest Size:  We have not been able to find current estimates of the size of each campaign’s ‘war-chest’, but the federal parties certainly accumulate significant resources between elections.  It was recently reported that the parties ended 2013 with accumulated assets of $16.3M (CP), $9.4M (LP) and $5.9M (NDP) at the national level, with the CP holding another $15.8M at the local level and $4M held on behalf of the local associations.  The LP and NDP had $8.1M and $4M, respectively, at the local level.  In addition, the parties raised considerable sums throughout 2014 ($20M/$15M/$9.5M, respectively, and $3M for the Green Party) and have recently reported the results of their fundraising through the first two quarters of 2015 ($13.7M/$8.1M/$7.8M/$1.5M) [see Elections Canada files].  They therefore have about $70M, $40M and $27M available to the largest three parties (we have insufficient data to estimate the amount available to the GP), less any expenditures they have made over the past 18 months.

Extended Campaign Limit Changes Only Affect Conservative Party:  Under the current regulations, each party running a full slate of candidates is entitled to spend a maximum of about $25 million for a five-week campaign and each candidate about $100,000, or ~$34M in total for the 338 ridings (though parties will generally concentrate their local spending in the much smaller number of swing ridings to save on overall expenses).

Under the recently passed Fair Elections Act, the government allowed the spending limits to increase for longer campaigns.  Had the campaign been the standard five weeks in length, it is likely that only the Conservative Party would have been constrained in its spending.  However, Prime Minister Harper’s decision to call an extended 11-week campaign means that the expenditure limits will roughly double, to about $52M per party and $210k per candidate ($71M total), effectively removing the constraint on spending the CP would otherwise have faced.  Since no other party would likely have been restrained by the regular campaign limits, they will not gain any benefit from the increased limits and will simply have to spend their existing funds over a longer period.

Subsidies:  Since 50-60% of a party’s campaign expenditures are reimbursed, the Conservative Party therefore stands to recoup a larger amount of money than they would have with a shorter campaign period.  We estimate that the three main parties will likely receive approximately $35M, $20M and $13M for the CP, LP and NDP, respectively, in expense reimbursement at the end of this year’s campaign (at $68M, this would be a considerable increase from the $48M these parties received following the 2008 election [Wikipedia]).  The GP received $1.7M in reimbursement in 2008.

4. Use of Government Advertising Budgets:  Although not normally considered to be a part of the election financing system, the governing party has access to a significant advertising budget while in office.  Government advertising costs run to approximately $100M per year, with some of the largest contracts in 2012-13 being the Economic Action Plan campaign at $15M (for a program that had ended two years previously), Responsible Resource Development at $8M, and a campaign promoting tax cuts at $7M.  The government recently spent $7.5M in May touting the success of the Economic Action Plan and an additional $13.5M to advertise its pre-election budget.  At least some significant portion of this funding could reasonably be considered to be subsidized partisan advertising, especially when government representatives are not scrupulous in separating their partisan and official responsibilities, as Minister Poilievre was recently accused of when he wore a Tory golf shirt when announcing the government’s $3B child benefit payment program.  In recognition of the potential for conflict of interest, the Ontario government requires the Auditor-General to approve all government advertising to ensure it is not partisan.

Summary of Subsidies:

1. Subsidy by Party:  The graph below shows the total subsidies by party for the three largest federal parties – it includes an estimate for the 2014 per-vote and donor subsidies, as well as an estimate for the 2015 campaign expense reimbursement subsidy, and assumes that $20M of the government’s annual advertising budget can be considered to be support for the governing party.  From this graph, it is clear that the Conservative Party receives on the order of $75M in public subsidies in an election year ($55M if the government advertising subsidy is excluded), compared with about $35M for the Liberal Party and $25M for the NDP.  We estimate the Green Party would have received under $5M in subsidies.

2. Ratio of Private Donations to Public Subsidy:  The next graph shows the ratio of the net donor contributions to the total amount of money spent by a party in an election year – this ranges from a low of 9% for the Conservative Party if the government’s advertising is included (12% without) to a high of 14% for the Liberal Party (and 13% for the NDP).  The Conservative Party therefore relies more on public subsidies as a fraction of their overall expenditures than the two other largest parties.

3. Public Subsidy Per Vote, By Party:  Finally, we calculate the estimated amount of the public subsidy per expected vote in the upcoming election (using CBC’s PollTracker data from Aug 4 to estimate what fraction of the vote each party will win and assuming 15M voters).  The final graph shows that Conservative Party is expected to receive a public subsidy of approximately $12-17 per expected vote (depending on whether or not government ad expenditures are included), while the Liberals will receive about $9/vote and the NDP about $5/vote.

Verdict:  So, to address Prime Minister Harper’s claim that campaign money should “come from the parties themselves [and] not from … taxpayer resources”, it is clear that all federal parties are heavily subsidized by the taxpayers, and the Conservative Party much more so than the others.

Note:  Arguable That Entire System is Publicly Funded:  One significant use of party funds is to generate the donor funds that are so important to a party’s overall budget – $1 of net voter contribution gets multiplied three times due to the donor tax credit program and another two times by the campaign expenditure reimbursement program, for a total of $5 of public subsidy for every $1 of private contribution.  Interestingly, the fundraising costs needed to generate these contributions are, on average, just about equal to the amounts raised [Wikipedia].  For example, in 2009, the Conservatives spent over $6M to raise about $5M in private funding, while the Liberals spent about $2M to raise $2.5M.  Without the public six-fold multiplier, the federal parties would be unable to raise any significant amount of money directly from the public because the cost of their fundraising campaigns would consume the entire amount of the donations.  In effect, since the cost of fundraising effectively cancels out the net amounts received, essentially all the funds that parties use to conduct their campaigns come from the publicly-provided pool.  The only functional purpose of the fundraising system is to provide indirect guidance on how much the public wishes each political party to receive.  Some have argued that it would be more efficient to use more direct approaches such as an annual check-off box on tax returns – this would be a useful thing for a future government to consider [Institute for Research on Public Policy, Flanagan and Coletto – U of Calgary].

As the election campaign unfolds, we will be sending out more frequent updates discussing issues particularly relevant to the campaign.  Stay tuned!

Update:  Now that final voting results have been reported, we have updated the calculations described below.  Please check the end of this post for the update.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether or not the turnout in last night’s election was up or down over 2009.  For example, the Huffington Post reports numbers purportedly from Elections BC that show a turnout of 52% compared with 51% in 2009, and this number was reported in other stories such as this one on Global News.  However, these numbers don’t make sense to us.  The answer likely lies in widespread confusion between the turnout of REGISTERED voters and turnout of ELIGIBLE voters.  The difference can be significant. Remember that out of the total population of BC, only some people are eligible to vote (with minor exceptions, all Canadian citizens over the age of 18 who have been resident in BC for more than six months).  To actually vote, one must register.  Historically, about 5-10% of eligible voters do not register. For example, the PolicyMonitor website has posted a news release from Elections BC with an attached factsheet that reports the following numbers:

• 2009:
  • 3,238,737 total estimated eligible voters
  • 2,995,465 registered voters
  • 1,651,567 total registered voters who voted
• 2013:
  • 3,310,218 total estimated eligible voters (BC Stats, Oct 1, 2012)
  • 3,110,267 total registered voters (April 15, 2013)

Elections BC reported the preliminary vote totals for the 2013 election as of May 15th at noon.  From this, we learn that 1,629,422 valid votes were cast in 2013. Adding in data from Stats BC about BC’s population in 2009 and 2013, we can construct the following table:

Leaving aside the fact that the estimate for eligible voters in 2013 is out of date by eight months and that the number of voters who ultimately registered must have increased over the past month, we see that the reporters appear to be comparing the turnout of ELIGIBLE voters in 2009 (51.0%) to the turnout of REGISTERED voters in 2013 (52.4%).  The more accurate comparison is between turnout of eligible voters;  on this basis, there is clearly a drop of at least 1.8% from 2009 to 2013 (ie, to 49.2%).  This makes perfect sense – BC’s population increased by over 200,000 people, the number of eligible voters rose by at least 70,000 (and more likely closer to 100,000, if we account for the additional eight months that have elapsed since the last estimate), and the number of votes cast dropped by over 20,000 (though some more mail-in ballots are yet to be counted – these accounted for about 2% of the ballots in BC in 2009, according to a 2012 article in the Parliamentary Review, which would represent about 33,000 votes this year).  If we account for the increase in the number of eligible voters over the past eight months and the mail-in ballots not yet counted, our final estimate of the turnout of eligible voters is still just under 50% (49.9%, to be more precise). In summary, voter turnout appears to still be dropping, despite news reports to the contrary.  If you are aware of any data to the contrary, please let us know.

Update: as of June 1, 2013

We were a little surprised, but pleased, to learn that the final vote counts were a fair bit higher than we’d originally estimated.  It appears that more voters voted in advance, by mail or at different polling stations than had happened previously.  According to Elections BC, the final count was 1,803,051, up over 9% from 1,651,567 in 2009. Extrapolating the number of eligible voters from last fall until this May, we estimate a number of 3.325 million, which means that turnout rose to approximately 54.5% (we have not yet been able to find a reliable figure for the final number of registered voters).  Also, the final popular vote results were:  Liberals 44.1%, NDP 39.7% and Greens 8.1%.

Why I’m supporting STV

Posted 5/7/2009 12:00:00 AM

In the last election I voted against STV. I even campaigned against it.

The single transferable vote, an idea that was launched by an assembly of non partisan everyday citizens, didn’t appeal to me. At the time, I believed my vote was the right one because I liked the current system of selecting MLA’s.

Looking back, I realize I liked our current system because it served my interests well. I was an elected politician who had been chosen under the first past the post system. I, like many of the entrenched interests who are today fighting against STV, didn’t see a need to change a system that was working – for me.

But since I have left politics my view has changed dramatically. Part of it has been due to the fact that I sit here in this chair at CKNW every day and hear from you. What do I hear?

I hear that people are sick to death of the way our political system operates.

(And I note that that frustration is bearing itself out at the polls as we see fewer and fewer people, especially young ones, showing up to vote. Every year, as we get more frustrated, fewer of us take the time to exercise our franchise – our most important democratic right, and one that thousands of Canadians died to preserve.)

People tell me they’re sick of seeing their vote thrown in the garbage if they live in one of the 2/3 of ridings that are safe and they didn’t happen to vote for the incumbent party.

They’re tired of electing politicians who ignore what their constituents want and do what their leaders want them to instead.

And I hear that people have had it up to here with politicians who attack each other relentlessly in an endless vitriolic war of words that poisons us all against our democratic process.

I have learned through my own experience in radio and in politics that while those are all things that likely bother you, they don’t for one moment bother the hacks, the backroom boys, and the politicians who are served and elected by our current system.

And when I look at so many of the people who are actively campaigning against STV, some of whom you often hear on CKNW, that is what I see: strategists and interest groups who have grown accustomed to the power the current system grants to them. I see people whose interests and in many cases, whose income is dependent on keeping our system the way it is. People who, unlike you, relish the ugly realities that are the consequence of our first past the post system.

They are fighting STV because the change it will bring frightens them.

First, it will force all politicians to compete for all of your votes. Candidates will be looking to be your first choice, but if not, then your second, or your third. In this context, no MLA will be safe forever, and every vote will be counted. We will stop throwing vast numbers of votes in the garbage once one candidate gets their 35%

Second, politicians will be forced to listen to their communities first and their leaders and parties second. When you vote you will have several choices to pick from your favourite party. If, for example, you are a committed BC Liberal wouldn’t it be nice to be able to choose from among them the one who was brave enough to stand up for you and against his or her party and stop the road, prison, or big polluter from going through your back yard?

Wouldn’t it be nice to choose the one who actually listened to you between elections?

Third, because STV will give you choices from among individuals, and you will have the choice to select the one you think is the smartest, most ethical, someone you can respect. How many times has a political party in your riding foisted a candidate on you who is an embarrassment but whom you vote for anyway because they are with the party you like?

Say good-bye to voting for bumblers who are destined for the backbench, because with STV you get to choose the best person not the party back roomers.

Fourth, the level of hateful invective will diminish radically. Under STV all politicians will have a strong incentive to get along better. They will be hoping to be the second or third choices of their opponents and supporters. The toxic insults and nasty rhetoric will be turned to a lower volume as politicians stop trying to win by ruining their opponents and instead start acknowledging them.

To me this is the biggest most important change that STV will bring about: civility in politics. I believe we need a new civility in our society and politics is where it can begin.

On Tuesday you will make two choices. The first is a short term choice of who will run our system for the next four years. You will vote for someone who has been chosen for you by entrenched interests in a big party machine. They will be someone who will be accountable to that machine, not to you. And perhaps some of the people you vote for will get elected not because of who they are but because they have proven to be the best at slinging mud.

The other vote you will cast will be the much more important one. It will be the vote that determines if next time you will be faced with exactly the same ugly choices, or if you get to make the choices yourself.

Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We have a choice, perhaps a once in a lifetime choice, to do things differently. We have a chance to change our political system and remake it into one that we can have some measure of faith in. If the established interests succeed in defeating this on Tuesday, they won’t give you another chance. I hope British Columbians take this chance for real change.

I hope we take this chance and vote for STV on Tuesday May 12.

A Huffington Post article today reported that outside groups spent over $1B in last year’s US presidential election, largely without transparency and oversight.  Closer to home, the Vancouver Park Board recently passed a motion calling on the BC provincial government to implement campaign finance reform;  their motion was endorsed by Integrity BC, which has a petition underway calling for such reforms.

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Fair Voting BC was an intervenor last fall when the BC government lost yet another bid to have the Court accept their gag law.  However, the Court’s ruling didn’t address our most significant concerns – namely, that the current law imposes unconstitutional restrictions on small entities.  The way the Act reads now, any communication with the public during an election period that is in any way related to an election issue or candidate counts as “election advertising”, so you must register with Elections BC – even if you didn’t spend a penny.  As the Chief Electoral Officer said in his 2010 report, this means that if you so much as put a handwritten sign in your window without registering with Elections BC, you risk a $10,000 fine and/or a year in jail.  This is an obvious and serious affront to free speech in BC.

We are therefore delighted to let you know that our co-intervenor, the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, has filed a Charter challenge in BC’s Supreme Court seeking to have the law struck down if the government fails to make amendments that respect citizens’ rights to free speech. Full information on the case can be found through FIPA’s website.

More Details from FIPA:

The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has filed a Charter challenge in B.C. Supreme Court in response to the provincial government’s refusal to fix unconstitutional third-party advertising provisions in its Election Act.

As it stands, the Act states that during an election period, any communication with the public that’s in any way related to an election issue or candidate counts as “election advertising”. This means that before you do something as small as putting a handwritten sign in your window, you must first register with Elections BC. If you don’t, you risk a $10,000 fine and/or a year in jail.

While many jurisdictions across the country have their own third-party advertising regulations, designed to stop big corporate and union donations from unfairly influencing elections, British Columbia is alone in its refusal to implement a lower limit for registration. During federal elections, the government doesn’t require registration unless you spend over $500 on your election “advertising”. In Alberta, the cutoff is even higher, set at $1000.

This is a balanced approach that keeps large election spending accountable and transparent while not interfering with the political speech of individuals and small groups. Unfortunately, B.C.’s provincial government has gone out of its way to avoid adopting this standard.

FIPA has been pressing the government on this issue for years, starting even before the last election. In 2010 they co-published a report with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives outlining how this bottomless definition of election advertising chills political speech among civil society organizations. FIPA was also an intervenor (with Fair Vote BC and others) when the government’s 2012 amendments to the Act were referred to the B.C. Court of Appeal (those amendments, for the record, didn’t fix the missing spending floor). Finally, in early January, when FIPA’s legal council asked the government for a justification of their refusal to address this problem, their lawyers claimed that the Act was valid and insisted that if there was a problem FIPA should take them to court -so they did.

And as if the delays and the stubbornness weren’t enough, it’s worth remembering that a few months ago, Attorney General Shirley Bond promised to bring forward legislation to establish provincial elections to fill Senate vacancies. Elections BC even received a million dollars to prepare for them. It would appear that the government is so deeply committed to democracy that they’re willing to drop $1 million into the possibility of Senate elections, yet won’t fix their truly unconstitutional Election Act, even with a provincial election looming.

If the government has the time to deal with a theoretical Senate election, it should have the time to fix an actual Charter breach that compromises the free speech rights of British Columbians. And they should do it before the next election.

Hearings Process:  The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission recently held hearings around BC.  The primary purpose of these hearings is to receive feedback on the EBC’s proposed riding boundaries, but Fair Voting BC appeared in order to make the case that the primary difficulties with the boundary-setting process arise from the way our voting system works.

Voter Equality Requires Proportional Representation:  The EBC is supposed to be respecting the principle of voter equality, but they focus on a very limited definition of equality – ensuring that each electoral district is roughly equivalent in population.  They do not pay any attention to the fact that fewer than half the voters end up with an MP they have voted for, which means that over half of voters are denied any representation of their choosing in the House of Commons.  Any of a number of forms of proportional representation could easily boost this to well over 90% of voters.

True ‘Rep by Pop’ Would Simplify Boundary-Setting:  We also discussed the idea that the EBC is also constrained by the assumption that ‘One MP = One Vote’ and suggested that if we take seriously the idea that ‘One Voter = One Vote’ in the House of Commons, then we could be much more tolerant of variations in riding populations where it makes sense to allow them to vary.  For example, if population in a region has risen by 10% since the last boundary-setting process, we could keep the boundaries in place and simply give the MP 10% more voting weight in the House of Commons.  We refer to this as true ‘rep by pop’ (representation by population).

Nova Scotia EBC Made Voting System Recommendations:  We were encouraged to see that the Nova Scotia provincial EBC very recently incorporated very similar recommendations in their report to government (click to download PDF).  You can also click here to download our submission to the EBC.

Fair Voting BC appeared in September as intervenors in the BC Court of Appeal reference case regarding the so-called ‘Gag Law’, in which the provincial government sought a ruling that their extension of third party advertising limits into a ‘pre-campaign’ period was constitutional.

In the original case, which was brought by the BC Teachers’ Federation, the primary concern was whether or not the government had the right to impose restrictions prior to the official campaign period.  A number of organizations, most notably the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in co-operation with the BC Civil Liberties Association, (see their Election Chill Effect report) argued that the law requiring anyone (even an individual) to register as an election advertising sponsor before communicating with the public about anything political made it impossible for many organizations to engage in public political debate during (and before) an election.  The government lost the BCTF challenge in 2008 and a subsequent appeal in 2011, and then introduced slightly modified legislation in 2012, but referred the updated legislation to the Court of Appeal (Reference Case) for a ruling on its constitutionality prior to enacting it.

Fair Voting BC applied for and received permission to appear as an intervenor in the Reference Case and we sought to represent the concerns of small entities:  individuals, charities, and issue-focused non-profit, non-partisan organizations.  We argued that, though the legislation is ostensibly aimed at curbing the influence of the wealthy, the provisions have not been tailored so as to exempt or exclude ordinary citizens and legitimate small third parties whose Charter rights to freedom of political expression ought not to be infringed according to the aim of the legislation.  In particular, we argued that the definition of election advertising is so overbroad that it captures even individuals wishing to post a handwritten sign in their own window (an example provided by the BC Chief Elections Officer), that it imposes onerous registration and labeling requirements on small entities and that it fails to exempt charities and voluntary contributions of labour, neither of which are targetted by or intended to be captured by this legislation.

We proposed that the legislation could be readily altered to address these unjustifiable infringements on the Charter rights of small entities by redefining election advertising to exempt pure issue advocacy, exempting charities, defining the concept of a non-wealthy (small) entity and exempting them from the registration and labeling requirements, and explicitly exempting volunteer labour.  You can view our entire submission here.

Unfortunately, the Court ruled last week primarily on the constitutionality of the government’s requested extension of the limits into the pre-campaign period (which they did find to be unconstitutional) and did not substantially engage with our (and others’) arguments that the existing provisions are unconstitutional (see story by Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughan Palmer), so the chill provisions will remain in force during the upcoming 2013 election campaign.  We will be considering how to respond to this continuing threat to our free speech rights in the coming year.

As people watched the Academy Awards last Sunday, we wonder how many realized that the nominees were chosen by preferential voting – in particular, a variant of the Single Transferable Vote (STV). The Academy Award organization actually uses slightly different rules for their various awards, so we can’t describe just one system, but most nominees in most categories are chosen using the following method:

1. Most award categories accept five finalists.
2. Academy members who are eligible to nominate movies in a particular category receive a ballot on which they can indicate their top five preferences (using numbers from 1 to 5).
3. Any movies that don’t receive at least one first-place choice from a voter are eliminated.
4. All ballots with the same first choice are grouped together.
5. Any nominee with more than 1/6th of the total number of votes will become a finalist.
6. If there are fewer than five finalists, the remaining nominee with the fewest number of votes will be eliminated and the ballots transferred to the next choice on each ballot.
7. Step 6 repeats until there are five finalists.

In effect, this is a multi-seat version of Instant Runoff Voting, in which the lowest ranked candidates are sequentially eliminated. It has the effect of choosing a broad set of widely supported nominees.

This year, the Academy introduced a slightly different procedure for selecting the Best Picture nominees. The new process is a little closer in spirit to the Single Transferable Voting method recommended by BC’s Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform in that extra votes (votes beyond the 1/6th of the ballots needed to win a finalist position) are redistributed in part to the second choice on each ballot after an initial round of elimination and transfers from the least popular nominees. This extra step is intended to ensure that ‘passion rules’ – i.e., that movies need both to have a loyal following and some broad support.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that were the way we elected our legislatures?

Related Links:

Fair Vote USA’s explanation of the process

‘Inside Movies’ explains the new nomination process for Best Picture

Fair Vote USA’s blog about the Academy’s voting processes

On October 30, 2011, Fair Voting BC sent a survey on civic democratic reform issues to all mayoral and council candidates in the city of Vancouver.  This page presents their detailed responses.  We also invite you to check out the press release we issued on November 11, 2011, as well as a list of responses summarized by question.

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This page presents responses to our Democratic Reform Survey (Vancouver) question by question.  For answers by candidate and party, click here.  For our press release, click here.  Special thanks to Korky Day for collating the following answers.

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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.