Welcome to Fair Voting's Future Planning Site

This site is intended to facilitate discussion about strategies for achieving electoral reform at one or more of the federal, provincial or local levels.  We invite all interested people to contribute to our discussion here. ...

New! Create New Promotions

Visit our new work area and help us to create some new promotional materials!

Primary Goal

The primary goal of Fair Voting BC is to achieve the implementation of a fair voting system at each of the federal, provincial and local levels of government.

Routes to Change

At each level of government, there are basically three ways that electoral reform could conceivably come about:

1. The governing party decides to implement a particular reform,
2. The voters approve a reform proposal in a referendum, or
3. The courts order that a change be made.

Please visit the sections below to read a discussion of each of these options in general, and follow the links to more specific proposals tailored to the different levels of government.  Your comments and contributions are warmly invited - the text below simply represents some initial thinking about these issues and is in no sense formal policy of FVBC.

Governing Party Decides to Implement Reform

Although historically governing parties tend to lose their taste for reform once in power, there are occasional circumstances in which they can perhaps be persuaded to change.  The UK Labour Party is currently wrestling with this question as they face significant losses in the coming election.  They are currently opting for a rather timid route, promising only to have a referendum on the mildest of reforms - the Alternative Vote - if re-elected, but some elements within the party are urging adoption of proportional representation or a referendum on PR at the time of the next election (spring 2010).

Alternatively, a party may come to power on the promise of electoral reform and then feel unable to back away from their promise.  This situation may apply to the federal Liberals if they feel that they would need the support of the Greens and/or the NDP to win the next election through deals aimed at avoiding competition in key ridings in return for a solid commitment to electoral reform (backed up by the ability of the partner to call for a vote of non-confidence if this commitment is not kept).  Such an option is less likely in BC because the opposition NDP party is more frequently in a position where it believes that it can win a majority outright without needing to rely on a deal with the Greens.

Voters Approve a Reform Proposal in a Referendum

There are currently no referendums on the horizon.  A referendum either needs to be granted by a government in response to political pressure, or a formal citizens' initiative needs to be passed.  The only jurisdiction in Canada where this is even technically possible is BC, but the hurdles are high - 10% of all registered voters in EACH AND EVERY RIDING must sign a petition within 90 days of issuance, and 50% of all registered voters overall, and 50% in two-thirds of the ridings, must approve it in the referendum.  Since turnout for provincial elections is hovering around 50%, and may drop below this for a stand-alone referendum, this means that an initiative question must achieve close to or over 100% support for it to pass.

There is therefore a strong argument to be made that the precursor to a successful referendum is a separate campaign to strengthen the Initiative Act in BC.  This would have the advantage of being neutral on the actual question of reform, though it divides the reform process into two significant stages.  If we could achieve a reformed initiative process in which 5% of voters in the province, with a minimum of 2% in every riding, would be enough to call a referendum, and if the referendum were carried on a majority of those voting, we would have a reasonable path to reform.

In parallel with the Initiative Campaign, we would have to work on a broadly consultative process in order to generate some consensus about what the best reform would be.  Unfortunately, this process would have to be largely outside government approval or support, so we would have a considerable organizational burden to overcome and we would have to be scrupulous about ensuring that no particular system was favoured in advance.  The obvious way to deal with this is to push for a two-part referendum question - the first would ask if we wanted to adopt an alternative voting system, and the second would ask for rankings of various alternatives, ideally to be counted by a well-respected voting system such as the Condorcet method (the option which wins head-to-head against all the others is the winner).

The Courts Order Change

If a provincial or federal court found that our current voting system violates our charter rights, they would likely order a remedy, which would most likely involve some significant element of proportional representation.  At the moment, the most plausible legal route is to support the legal challenge underway in Quebec.

Other Ideas: 

In the summer, we asked for people to submit a variety of ideas for actions or initiatives that FVBC might take on.  Feel free to browse the collection below and offer your comments:

• Opportunities to achieve voting reform

• Have CA issue recommendation to provincial government to adopt the Alternative Vote (Antony Hodgson)

• Create a 'Take Part in the Real Election' Initiative (Bruce Krayenhoff)

• Call for a new Citizens' Assembly (Max Anderson)

• IRV (Alternative Vote - Choice - Ranked voting) 

• Hybrid IRV+Proportional System

• Pursue a less confrontational, more educational campaign (Russ Miller)

• Start a new party focused on CA-type policy formulation and democratic reform (Here's one design) (Bruce Krayenhoff)

• Legal challenge of the referendum result because of NO side misrepresentation of STV

• Pursue reform at the university and organizational levels (Bruce Krayenhoff)

• Undertake an online-based multi-stakeholder deliberation process to create a consensus for change and potentially avoid the need for a new referendum (Antony Hodgson)

• Pursue civic voting reform in Vancouver and Victoria (Steven Hurdle)

• Pursue civic voting reform in other, smaller municipalities (Ramsay Malange)

• Pursue voting reform in NGOs

• Understanding basics of electoral method

• Try to introduce a modified form of STV

• Try to get BC-STV considered again through the Initiative Act

• Find a new voting system to back

• Adopt an incremental approach

• Concentrate on educating the next generation 

• Seek funding for an independent educational campaign (approx $10M needed)

• Pursue federal or provincial Senate reform 

• Ask the CAER to propose many new electoral reforms; if government balks, circulate initiative petitions; proposals could include creating a BC constitution, sex parity, voter tax rebate, choice of several voting systems, election holiday, mandatory debates, etc.  (Korky Day)

• Other opportunities for reform (not necessarily voting)

• Focus on other democratic reform processes, not voting reform (Antony Hodgson)

• Start a long-term, province-wide initiative to educate people about electoral reform (Reena Meijer Drees)

• Initiate a court challenge to the practice of whipped votes (Roy Roope)

• Make it easy for non-profit societies and associations to adopt better voting methods (Jim DeLaHunt

• Work to establish a body to oversee legislators (salaries, perks, working conditions, etc)

• Work to increase voter involvement (mandatory voting, more shows like CBC's 'The House', etc)

• Citizens' Assembly Enhanced Direct Democracy (Highly recommended by Bruce Krayenhoff)

• Click here for an excellent summary of problems with our democratic institutions other than voting

• Comment by Bruce Krayenhoff: The most fundamental problem with our democracy (which is not addressed here) is that most voters are really not paying much attention, and so know very little about important issues, are easily manipulated, etc.  The only proposal I know of that attempts to address this issue directly is Deliberation Day, however many of the other proposals suggested above address some of the problems resulting from this more fundamental problem.  I have wondered if a more modest version of Deliberation Day targeted at new voters might be more saleable...

• Structure of FVBC

• FVBC should adopt a membership-based structure with provisions for balancing the board across party and regional lines (Antony Hodgson)
• New committee structure (Antony Hodgson)
• How FVBC should broaden the range of issues it works on. (Bruce Krayenhoff - Response to ideas for broadening FVBC's focus beyond electoral reform)
• Base FVBC on regional/local chapters
• Merge FVBC with Fair Vote Canada (Roy Ball)
• Voter Funded Media (VFM - Highly recommended by Bruce Krayenhoff)
• Earmarked Donations (Bruce Krayenhoff)
• Committee for Considering Members' Ideas (Bruce Krayenhoff)

• Mini-Citizens' Assemblies (Bruce Krayenhoff)

• FVBC should lead a grassroots electoral reform movement (Jim DeLaHunt)

• Your proposal(s) here:
• Comprehensive proposal from James Roy

Related Issues and Analysis

In addition to the specific proposals presented above, we would like to discuss other related issues.  Please feel free to add questions you'd like answers to or to contribute discussion papers on particular topics (please add your name if you contribute a question or paper).

Analysis: 

• Why did support for BC-STV drop by 20%? 
• Are BC voters happy with our current system or angry and disenchanted?
• What issues did the referendum campaign end up being about?
• What was the BC-STV referendum strategy? What was effective and ineffective about the strategy?
• How well did the BC-STV side execute the campaign? What worked well, what worked poorly?
• What was the No on BC-STV side's referendum strategy?  How well did they execute?
• Where are the next best opportunities for electoral reform?  Are they at the municipal, provincial or federal levels, or in other organizations?

Resources (coming)

• FVBC Constitution and Bylaws
• Key survey results
• Ipsos Reid - Support for STV was 66% amongst Greens, 51% amongst NDP, 21% amongst Liberal supporters
• Carty, Cutler and Fournier poll - substantiates the Ipsos Reid poll - Liberal supporters only supported STV at about the 20% level.
• Fair Vote Canada & Stratcom Poll - 44% of those who voted for FPTP support a more proportional system (39+0.44*61 = 66% altogether).

New to Wikis?  Feel free to check out the following resources that PBWorks has made available:

• Learn what makes a good collaboration project and see how other PBworks customers are using their workspaces. Check out our PBworks educator community (not a support forum).

• The PBworks Manual and 30-second training videos can help show you how to edit, add videos and invite users.
• The best way to get your support questions answered is to click the help link at the top of this page.  Our support gurus will get back to you asap.