Publication: Victoria Times-Colonist
Title: B.C. switches decision day
Date: May 29, 2006
By: Les Leyne
For the article, click here.
VICTORIA -- Through gritted teeth, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has caved in and reluctantly moved his shot at making history four years further into the future.
He already has a place in history, of course. He's a premier. But you never know how history is going to treat the day-to-day decisions during your term in office.
Years from now, he could be viewed as the turnaround artist of the 21st century, the guy who picked up B.C. by the scruff of the neck and straightened it out.
But he could also go down as someone who gets grudging credit for a government remodelling job, but not much else. Who knows? His history is all in the future.
His one clear shot at going down in the books on his own terms is the still confusing reform of the electoral system by way of the single transferable vote. But grappling with that issue is turning into a much longer campaign than was first expected.
Initially, electoral reform was handed over to the 160-member citizens' assembly. It turned into a brilliant stroke, an innovative experiment in direct democracy. That assembly was given time to study voting issues and make two decisions. The first was whether B.C. should change systems; the second was what new system to adopt.
Seven months before the 2005 election, it decided yes, the system should be changed. Changed to what?
Its preferred option was an obscure, complicated system known as the single transferable vote. That prompted a spirited debate between two opposing camps that together comprised a minute fraction of the population. The vast majority of voters spent the election campaign just scratching their heads trying to figure it out, when they thought of it at all.
The referendum result, of course, just added to the confusion. A majority of 57 per cent supported the change.
But it wasn't enough to meet the 60-per-cent threshold required to make the change.
Campbell spent a few months mulling over the results. The throne speech after the election posed this riddle: "A troubling question remains; why did so many people vote so strongly to change the current system?"
Last November, he finally decided on a response. Crucial information that was missing last time -- the boundaries for the new ridings required if a new system is approved -- would be supplied by a new boundaries commission.
It is going to draw up two maps. One will update the ridings based on the current system, the other will present the new map required if the STV system is used.
The government also promised to hold another referendum on municipal election day in November 2008. The result would determine the rules for the 2009 provincial general election seven months later.
A few weeks after that, chief electoral officer Harry Neufeld explained to one and all how expensive this was going to get.
He costed out the government's plan and arrived at a startling figure -- as much as $60 million to enumerate the voters and settle the STV question once and for all. He also noted a number of problems with the brief period there is between the proposed November 2008 referendum and the potential start of an election campaign under different ground rules a few months later.
There is a staggering amount of work to do in that original time frame.
And because a long lead time is needed to be ready for anything, there was the potential for a lot of it to be wasted duplication. The office faced the prospect of simultaneously getting two big, complicated machines ready to go on a tight deadline, knowing one of them would stay parked.
So after another couple of months mulling all that over, Campbell changed his mind.
The referendum on municipal voting day would have cost up to $30 million. But holding it during a general election costs just a fraction of that, and gets a lot more participation.
So he bowed to the warning about mass confusion and announced last month he's putting it off until the 2009 election.
And that obviously puts off the prospect of changing the voting system until 2013.
The further the question is put off, the easier it is to ignore. But it's a sleeper issue that isn't going to go away, particularly because Campbell is also promising to provide funding to both for and against camps.
The one thing he didn't change -- to the dismay of STV fans -- was the 60-per-cent approval threshold. It's impossible to know whether voters are still hung up on the change. But the potential is still there for a hung jury, just like the last time.
Supporters feel it just needs a slightly stronger push to put the new system over the top in 2009, and in place for 2013. But there's a limit to how many kicks people want to take at this can.
Comments