British Columbians will start voting on whether to change the provincial electoral system right after this fall’s municipal elections.
Attorney General David Eby released his recommendations on electoral reform May 30, and they call for a referendum campaign to begin July 1 with voting by mail between Oct. 22 and Nov. 30.
There will be two questions:
1. Which should British Columbia use for elections to the Legislative Assembly? The current First Past the Post voting system or a proportional representation voting system.
2. If British Columbia adopts a proportional representation voting system, which of the following voting systems do you prefer? Dual Member Proportional (DMP), Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) or Rural-Urban PR.
On the second question voters will be able to choose just one option or rank the systems in order of preference.
Eby recommends that if the vote favours proportional representation it would have to be done without a significant increase in the size of the legislature, without any region of the province ending up with fewer MLAs and with no party eligible to receive a seat unless it gets more than five per cent of the overall vote in the province or a region.
He also recommends a second referendum after two general elections under any new system so British Columbians can decide whether to keep proportional representation or return to a first past the post system.
Eby said Wednesday that the government will appoint the chief electoral officer to provide the public with neutral, factual information during the campaign.
Elections BC will also be tasked with selecting one group on each side of the debate to receive $500,000 to “stimulate public interest and debate about the choices … restricted by rules around the use of this funding similar to the 2009 [electoral reform] referendum.”
All other third-party participants will be treated the same way as third parties in a general election in terms of fundraising and spending restrictions. MLAs, cabinet ministers and government officials will have to follow the same rules as they did during other referendum campaigns.
Eby acknowledged that long campaigns sometimes cause people to lose interest, but he said in this case there are advantages. “The benefit of a longer campaign in this situation is that these are three systems that are on the ballot that people won’t generally be familiar with. They’re going to need to inform themselves about what they would look like and so on, and they’ll do so with the assistance of Elections BC… The various groups that are interested in this will have the opportunity to go out and make their case.”
Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson said the proposal amounts to an attempt to “stack the deck in a rigged game to favour [Premier John Horgan’s] desired outcome” and the questions are confusing.
“The premier promised a simple ‘yes or no’ question. He broke that promise,” Wilkinson said in a statement released shortly after Eby’s Wedensday press conference. “I am confident that British Columbians do not want their democratic rights altered by crass, political self-interest.”
The BC Greens, who made holding a referendum on proportional representation and campaigning in support of it part of their agreement with the NDP, praised Eby’s recommendations.
“I am pleased that the AG took advice from a wide range of voices who participated in this consultation process and that his recommendations reflect the concerns and desires of the whole province,” said MLA Sonia Furstenau.
As well as setting out recommendations for the referendum, Eby announced a second electoral reform initiative – a legislative committee to examine ways to improve the representation of Indigenous people in the Legislature.
“This is independent of the referendum and based on feedback received from First Nations communities as part of the engagement process,” Eby said. “Topics discussed by that committee would include accessibility and inclusion and the possibility of creating one or more designated seats for Indigenous people.”
The three PR options
Here is how Attorney General David Eby’s report describes the three proportional representation options that will be on the referendum ballot:
Dual Member Proportional Voting
Dual Member Proportional is a proportional voting system in which most of the province’s existing single-member electoral districts would be amalgamated with a second neighbouring district to create two-member districts. The largest rural districts could remain unchanged as single-member districts.
Political parties nominate up to two candidates per electoral district who appear on the ballot in an order determined by the party. Voters cast a single vote for the pair of candidates of the political party of their choice. Seats are won in two ways: the first seats are won by the first candidates of the party that receives the most votes in each electoral district, similar to FPTP; the second seats are allocated based on province-wide voting results and the individual district results.
The process for allocating the second seat in the electoral districts provides an overall result that is proportional province-wide: the total number of seats each party should win is determined based on the parties’ shares of the province-wide vote; the number of first district seats each party has won is subtracted from that total, leaving the number of second district seats each party should be allocated; the second district seats are allocated to each party based on the strength of their performance in each district.
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) Voting
MMP combines single-member electoral districts elected under FPTP with List PR seats allocated on a regional or provincial level. The overall share of seats each party holds in the Legislative Assembly is determined by the party’s share of the province-wide vote. Candidates who fill the List PR seats are either elected directly or allocated from the parties’ lists of candidates to compensate for any disproportional results from the FPTP vote, so that the overall provincial result is fairly proportional.
Rural-Urban Proportional Voting
Rural-Urban PR is a mixed voting system that elects MLAs in two ways: using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in urban and semi-urban areas – that is, electoral
districts that elect multiple members and voters rank-order their preferences (1, 2, 3, etc.) for candidates appearing on the ballot; and using Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) in rural areas – that is, single-member electoral districts using FPTP with a small number of List PR seats allocated to provide some proportionality in these regions. Rural-Urban PR consists of multi-member districts with seats filled using STV in urban and semi-urban areas and MMP in the most rural areas. In the MMP regions, a small number of List PR seats are filled proportionally on a regional basis in order to provide some proportionality for those regions.
