This was a comment left by Scotty On Denman. Given the long hiatus before the wars at the Rockpile start up again in earnest, I thought it worthy of a look.
Voters do not need to vote en mass for the Greens to end up with a BC Liberal government by way of splitting the vote: even if half of polled citizens who say they support the Greens actually voted for them, it would likely return the BC Liberals. All reasonable measures suggest Green support is very soft; sure, lots of citizens would like to vote Green, and probably for more than simply environmental reasons, but will vote strategically for the NDP which is the only party that has a realistic chance of beating the BC Liberals—besides, the parties’ respective environmental platforms are much closer together than either’s are to the BC Liberals’ who are essentially the environmental bad guys in this play.
No serious restructuring of the economy or society is on offer, nor are there compelling reasons for undertaking such before a return to observing laws that already exist happens. Many of the problems we have in BC are due to flagrant breaches of trust by the BC Liberal government that include breaking campaign promises in a very big way (eg. BCR, HST and LNG), blatant conflicts of interest, cronyism, secrecy and numerous negligence in enforcing all kinds of laws and regulations.
We already have a plurality system that rewards parties which build bigger tents through compromise. Otherwise there is no constitutional alternative allowed for the passage of bills, that is, by a simple majority of parliamentary votes. This is true regardless of electoral system, despite claims by pro-reppers that parliamentary voting will be somehow different under pro-rep; it wouldn’t be, and neither would the Westminster parliamentary system’s primary strength: confidence (pro-reppers have been known to make claims that ignore this immutable fact).
Everything you suggest should get done by an NDP government I agree with except for pro-rep. It’s the very last thing a new government should embroil itself in, especially in BC where there’ll be plenty of more important work in forensic discovery and remediation of BC Liberal damage to the public weal, and where STV was rejected twice, by twice the margin the second time as the first. We should take a lesson from the federal electoral reform debacle: never let partisans decide anything about electoral systems. In time an older NDP government might consider referring electoral reform to the proper agency, Elections BC, the only one with the proven impartiality and expertise to address reform to the extent voters want.
Although Citizens’ Initiative has frustrated many voters (reminding that it was designed by partisans under political imposition, not by an impartial agency like Elections BC in response to public will), it seems, with regard “Recall,” unreasonable to allow less than 40% of riding voters to overturn an election result (the designers couldn’t very well set the threshold at 50% because the target MLA could well have won the seat in the first place with less that 50% of the votes, nor could they very well allow only 30% to overturn an election else a revolving door of Recalls and by-elections interrupt with Westminster parliament’s prime directive to pass legislation whenever it’s needed and in a timely way (parliamentary confidence precludes legislative gridlock). No Recall has succeeded in BC despite over two dozen attempts.
The Anti HST Petition, on the other hand, was much more successful, in fact setting an important international precedent: it led to the first time in eight centuries of Commonwealth parliamentary history that a legislated tax was rescinded by force of popular measure. In BC that simply meant the HST was rejected at referendum—although that mail-in ballot voting system experience (not to be confused with electoral systems) should have taught us a lesson that such voting systems should not be allowed due to inherent veracity and fraud problems; banning online voting and mail-in ballots would be a welcome reform.
But these experiences have suggested improvements more practical than firing MLAs with ease. The Petition rules of CI do not include binding MLAs to a clear vote in the Assembly; Campbell could have legally addressed the Petition by simply introducing the matter on the order paper, the Petition only having legal force to make MLAs acknowledge it in session. Referendum is of course another way to address the Petition but, even then, Campbell set the threshold to a level he considered politic—50%—when he could have quite legally set it higher. Taking these kinds of discretions away from partisan politicians might be a worthy reform of CI.
The designers of CI also wrestled with California-style Propositions, but shied away, recognizing existing reticence among the electorate who were well aware of the excesses of such CI tactics in that state. These matters might be addressed in order to allow, but ameliorate the pitfalls of, Proposition rules such as we’ve seen down south.
In any case, as the words Citizens’ Initiative implies, it’s largely up to citizens to make it work, whatever the rules; they have to get involved—and no legislation will make that happen short of compulsory voting. Perhaps we could have a referendum—see how many turn out.
The easiest and quickest way to improve BC politics is to get campaign financing under control, and that means first getting rid of the BC Liberals who will never acquiesce when in power, and who might very well never get a chance, after forensic investigation of the books (assuming they lose), to win power again—if only they’re disconnected from it just once.
No original Dylan on Y’Tube, so Robben will have to do.