The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform was created by the government of British Columbia, Canada to investigate changes to the provincial electoral system. On October 25, 2004, the citizens' assembly proposed replacing the province's existing first past the post (FPTP) system with BC-STV, a single transferable vote (STV) system. This recommendation was put to the electorate in a referendum in 2005 held during that year's provincial election. The provincial government required the referendum to achieve a super-majority of 60 percent of voters and simple majorities in 60 percent of the 79 districts in order to pass. The second of these thresholds was easily met, with a majority supporting the reform in 77 out of 79 electoral districts, but the overall vote fell short of the 60 percent requirement, with 57.69 percent of the votes in favour. [1] A second referendum in 2009 on adopting the STV system also failed to pass carrying 8 electoral districts and 39.09 percent of the overall vote. [1] [2]
The assembly has been credited with inspiring experiments in Canada (including Ontario), Ireland and Australia among others. [3]
During the 2001 provincial election, the Liberal Party promised to create a citizens' assembly to consider changes to the provincial electoral system (as opposed to forming a Royal Commission, as New Zealand did). The recommendation of the assembly would then be put as a referendum. In December 2002, Gordon Gibson submitted his report, recommending an assembly composed of randomly selected citizens, two from each of the province's 79 electoral districts. In May 2003, the Legislature unanimously adopted the concept and most of the details.[ citation needed ]
Counting the chair, the BC Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform was composed of 161 members: one man and one woman randomly selected from each of BC's 79 electoral districts, two Aboriginal members and a chair. [4] Assembly members were selected by a civic lottery that aimed for balance by gender, age group and geographical distribution of the population. [5]
Selection of members for the assembly involved a three-stage process:
From January to May 2004, the assembly conducted a twelve-week "learning phase" involving expert presentations, group discussions and access to source materials. Work included a review of electoral systems in use around the world and their various effects on the political process. This was followed by a public consultation phase lasting from May to June. Assembly members held over 50 public hearings and received a total of 1603 written submissions. [6]
Between September and October 2004, the members deliberated over which electoral system to recommend, emphasizing three values deemed most important: fairness of representation, local representation and voter choice. Among the alternatives considered were a mixed member proportional system (MMP) and a single transferable vote (STV) system. [5]
On October 23 and 24, 2004, the assembly voted on different options in three separate votes. A first vote asked members to express their preference for MMP or STV. This vote yielded a strong but not unanimous preference for STV: 123 votes for STV versus 31 for MMP. Members then voted between retaining FPTP or moving to STV. There was a strong preference for STV: 142 votes for STV versus 11 for retaining FPTP. Finally, the assembly voted on whether to submit a recommendation in favour of STV to the public in a referendum on May 17, 2005, which passed with 146 in favour and 7 against. [5]
On December 10, the assembly's final report, titled Making Every Vote Count: The Case for Electoral Reform in British Columbia, was presented to the BC legislature by the assembly. It recommended changing the electoral system to a localized version of STV called BC-STV. A separate final report on the work of the assembly was submitted to the legislature by the Special Committee on the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in February 2005. [7]
In May 2005, the recommendations from the assembly were approved by 57.7 percent of voters in a referendum and were supported by a majority of voters in 77 of the province's 79 electoral districts. However, the provincial government at the time required the referendum to attain a super-majority to pass, including:
With the first condition unmet, no change ensued. Similar recommendations received support from 39.1 percent of voters in a follow-up referendum in 2009. [8]
The assembly has been credited with inspiring and popularizing the concept of Citizens' Assemblies around the world, including in Canada (including Ontario), Ireland and Australia among others. [3]
Michael Pal noted that had the decision been made to set a threshold below 60 percent, that the measure likely would have passed. [9]
James Fishkin argued that because the process was not public, and was not widely understood, that the recommendations did not carry as much weight as they otherwise would. [10]
The resulting assembly had representation biases due to its geographical selection, [9] with the impact of self-selection on the process resulting in fewer non-voters and disproportionately middle-aged and educated participants. [11]
According to André Blais, Kenneth Carty and Patrick Fournier, members of the assembly appeared dissatisfied with BC's current electoral system, while surveys of the public indicated it to be relatively satisfied. [12]
Lang noted two similarities across the assembly: an interest in learning, especially about the political process, and a commitment to process once it started. She wrote, "this is likely to have contributed to the excellent working dynamic within the Assembly". [13]
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone. Under other election systems, a bare plurality or a scant majority are all that are used to elect candidates. Further, a PR system is one that produces mixed and balanced representation, reflecting how votes are cast.
Mixed-member proportional representation is a mixed electoral system which combines local majoritarian elections with a compensatory tier of party list votes, which are used to allocate additional members in a way that aims to produce proportional representation overall. In most MMP systems, voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Some countries use single vote variants of MMP, although this article focuses primarily on dual vote versions of MMP.
Electoral reform in New Zealand has been a political issue in the past as major changes have been made to both parliamentary and local government electoral systems.
Canada holds elections for legislatures or governments in several jurisdictions: for the federal (national) government, provincial and territorial governments, and municipal governments. Elections are also held for self-governing First Nations and for many other public and private organizations including corporations and trade unions. Municipal elections can also be held for both upper-tier and lower-tier governments.
The 2005 British Columbia general election was held on May 17, 2005, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) of the Province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The British Columbia Liberal Party formed the government of the province prior to this general election under the leadership of Premier Gordon Campbell. The main opposition was the British Columbia New Democratic Party, whose electoral representation was reduced to two MLAs in the previous provincial election in 2001.
A referendum was held in the Canadian province of British Columbia on May 17, 2005, to determine whether or not to adopt the recommendation of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to replace the existing first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP) with a single transferable vote system (BC-STV). It was held in conjunction with the BC Legislative Assembly election of 2005. Voters were given two ballots at that time: a ballot to vote for a Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia (MLA) in their constituency and a referendum ballot. The referendum received considerable support from the electorate but failed in meeting the 60-percent threshold that had been set. A second referendum was held in 2009.
The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform was established by the government of the province of Ontario, Canada, in March 2006. Modelled on the British Columbia equivalent, it reviewed the first past the post electoral system currently in use to elect members of the Ontario Legislature, with the authority to recommend an alternative. In May 2007, the assembly recommended, in a decision of 94 to 8, that Ontario adopt a form of mixed member proportional representation (MMP).
A referendum was held on October 10, 2007, on the question of whether to establish a mixed member proportional representation (MMP) system for elections to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The vote was strongly in favour of the existing plurality voting or first-past-the-post (FPTP) system.
BC-STV is the proposed voting system recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in October 2004 for use in British Columbia, and belongs to the single transferable vote family of voting systems. BC-STV was supported by a majority of the voters in a referendum held in 2005 but the government had legislated that it would not be bound by any vote lower than 60 percent in favour. Because of the strong majority support for BC-STV, the government elected to stage a second referendum in 2009, but with increased public funding for information campaigns to better inform the electorate about the differences between the existing and proposed systems. The leadership of both the "yes" side and the "no" side were assigned by the government. The proposal was rejected with 60.9 percent voting against, vs. 39.1 percent in favour, in the 2009 vote.
Historically, the single transferable vote (STV) electoral system has seen a series of relatively modest periods of usage and disusage throughout the world; however, today it is seeing increasing popularity and proposed implementation as a method of proportional representation and a goal of electoral reform. STV has been used in many different local, regional and national electoral systems, as well as in various other types of bodies, around the world.
The Politics of British Columbia involve not only the governance of British Columbia, Canada, and the various political factions that have held or vied for legislative power, but also a number of experiments or attempts at political and electoral reform.
Following the 2005 electoral reform referendum, British Columbia held a second referendum on electoral reform in conjunction with the provincial election on May 12, 2009. As in 2005, voters in 2009 were asked were asked which electoral system should be used to elect legislators: the existing first-past-the-post electoral system or the BC single transferable vote electoral system (BC-STV) proposed by the British Columbia Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform to ensure more proportional representation in the provincial Legislative Assembly.
A referendum was held in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island on November 28, 2005, to determine whether to adopt the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system as recommended by the Prince Edward Island Electoral Reform Commission in 2003.
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
Dual-member proportional representation (DMP), also known as dual-member mixed proportional, is an electoral system designed to produce proportional election results across a region by electing two representatives in each of the region’s districts. The first seat in every district is awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes, similar to first-past-the-post voting (FPTP). The second seat is awarded to one of the remaining district candidates so that proportionality is achieved across the region, using a calculation that aims to award parties their seats in the districts where they had their strongest performances.
A mixed electoral system or mixed-member electoral system combines methods of majoritarian and proportional representation (PR). The majoritarian component is usually first-past-the-post voting (FPTP/SMP), whereas the proportional component is most often based on party-list PR. The results of the combination may be mixed-member proportional (MMP), where the overall results of the elections are proportional, or mixed-member majoritarian, in which case the overall results are semi-proportional, retaining disproportionalities from the majoritarian component.
A referendum on electoral reform took place by mail-in ballot between October 22 and December 7, 2018, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. 61.3 percent of voters supported maintaining the first-past-the-post voting system rather than switching to a proportional representation voting system, which was supported by 38.7 percent of voters. This was British Columbia's third referendum on electoral reform, following ones in 2005 and 2009.
Rural–urban proportional representation (RUP), also called flexible district PR, is a mixed electoral system which combines the use of single- and multi-member constituencies in a lower tier and top-up seats in an upper tier to meet the different needs of both rural and urban areas, while protecting the objective of proportionality. The term was coined by Fair Vote Canada, which devised a rural–urban system with the intention of meeting the special challenges of Canada's geography, which includes wide-flung, sparsely populated areas.
A referendum on electoral reform was held on April 23, 2019, in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island – simultaneously with the 2019 provincial election – to determine if the province should adopt a mixed-member proportional representation voting system (MMP). A narrow majority voted to keep the existing first-past-the-post system. However, the referendum was not binding, as neither the yes or no side received majority support in 60% or more of the province's 27 electoral districts.
Mixed-member majoritarian representation (MMM) is type of a mixed electoral system combining winner-take-all and proportional methods, where the disproportional results of the winner-take-all part are dominant over the proportional component. Mixed member majoritarian systems are therefore categorized under semi-proportional representation, and are usually contrasted with mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) which aims to provide proportional representation compensation ("top-up") seats.