Christmas came a few days early, courtesy of British Columbia, which rejected the referendum to change their voting system. A decisive 61.3 percent of British Columbians voted to keep First Past the Post, which one hopes would shut up the proportional representation Kool-Aid drinkers for some time – not that it will. They’ve already begun the ritual grousing over Twitter about how a) the referendum was the problem and people rejected it and not PR; and b) that voters are just too stupid to get that “PR is lit,” to coin a phrase. The provincial Green Party leader, Andrew Weaver, says that he gets the message and that they won’t be raising it “anytime soon” – but he also didn’t want a referendum in the first place and wanted it imposed, so we’ll see how long before he starts agitating for that option.
Next up for attempts at electoral reform are Quebec – where François Legault promised it sans-referendum with the support of other party leaders – and PEI, where PR narrowly “won” a poorly attended plebiscite, on the late round of a ranked ballot, hence the government plans to run another referendum during the next provincial election.
But seriously, guys. We need to stop this mythmaking about the current system, and this belief that PR is the only “good” system. Most of the gripes about the current system stem from ignorance and disengagement with the process that has allowed bad actors to co-opt the system to their own ends (and this is especially because of the bastardised leadership selection system that we have gravitated toward despite is demonstrated toxic effect on our system). PR doesn’t solve these problems – if anything, most PR systems simply exacerbate them and create whole new problems. Time to focus our efforts toward civic literacy and using grassroots engagement to fix the problems that we’ve allowed to creep into our system. And hey, I wrote a book on this as a primer for you.
https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1075903388187910145
https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1075906692880068608
https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1075956069082386432
Meanwhile, Shachi Kurl of the Angus Reid institute breaks down the polling around the referendum, and should put to bed a few of the myths.
2) Majorities of past @bcndp and @BCGreens, in turn, chose #prorep, but there these blocks were less overwhelming in in their support for change: pic.twitter.com/qdZDBLlitq
— Shachi Kurl (@ShachiKurl) December 21, 2018
4) So what were some of the other motivations? #proprep voters really believed their vote would matter more: pic.twitter.com/8tK0P4pwNn
— Shachi Kurl (@ShachiKurl) December 21, 2018
6) There was a lot of polarization among #PropRep and #FPTP voters over whether the vote was even needed: pic.twitter.com/4wKTeVjfsu
— Shachi Kurl (@ShachiKurl) December 21, 2018
8) the #FPTP folks OTOH, were under no illusions that sticking with the status quo would be amazing… but they did see it as the best system we have: pic.twitter.com/atwJvzwUJc
— Shachi Kurl (@ShachiKurl) December 21, 2018
10) A lot of @bcliberals folks I've talked to seem to think the referendum result will mean an election soon for BC. I could be wrong, but I don't.
— Shachi Kurl (@ShachiKurl) December 21, 2018
12) Yes, the @bcliberals will take a victory lap on this. They delivered their vote. The @bcndp looks sheepish for not doing the same, but also, I don't think they really care & feel decent about their chances IF an election were called.
— Shachi Kurl (@ShachiKurl) December 21, 2018
https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1075928443865292800