STV for BC - Vote Yes!

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

How did we get here? (Backgrounder)

In the 1996 B.C. provincial election the Liberal party received roughly 662,000 votes, or 42% of the total. Meanwhile, the NDP received roughly 624,000 votes, 39% of the total. But thanks to the unfairness of B.C.'s current electoral system, the NDP ended up forming a majority government with 39 seats to the Liberals 33 seats.

Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the Liberals included electoral reform as part of their platform in the subsequent 2001 election. In that election, the Liberals were on the receiving end of the system's unfairness as they ended up winning 77 of 79 seats in the legislature, despite getting 'only' 58% of the vote. Meanwhile the NDP got almost a quarter of all the votes (22%) but only got 2 seats and the Green Party got over 12% of the votes and didn't receive any seats at all.

To their credit, the Liberals didn't let the fact that the system had favoured them this time around dissuade them from carrying through on their promise to look at electoral reform.

What they did is create a 'Citizens' Assembly' which included two randomly selected members from each riding in the province (+2 First Nations members), and a chair appointed by the Assembly members. The Assembly members then spent the better part of the next 2 years learning about electoral systems and holding public hearings at which people could give their opinion about what they should recommend.

The Assembly finished its work with 3 votes:

October 23, 2004: Which of the two alternatives would best serve British Columbia?
MMP - 31, STV - 123.

October 24, 2004: Do we recommend retaining the current First-Past-the-Post electoral system in British Columbia?
YES - 11, NO 142.

October 24, 2004: Do we recommend the STV (BC-STV) system to the people in a referendum on May 17, 2005
YES 146, NO 7.


So that's how we got here. More details on the Assembly process can be found in the Assembly's final report

And if you're really a glutton for punishment, you can dive into the Assembly's 280 page technical report.

If you'd rather read someone else's background on how we got here, this one was pretty good (in my opinion).

Next up: What the heck is STV anyway?

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