Does the failure of the BC-STV referendum signal the death of voting reform in Canada?

The Single Transferable Vote is dead. Muerte. Kaput. Voters in BC resoundingly rejected it, with over 60% of them responding 'no' to voting reform in the recent referendum.

That's two voting reform defeats in a row in British Columbia; coupled with the recent defeat of Mixed Member Proportional in Ontario, one could surmise that another voting reform proposal won't be showing up any time soon, on either the federal or provincial level.

And that's too bad. Our current system is broken and in serious need of repair. I'm sure most of us can relate to the awful feeling of stepping up to the voting booth and marking our X next to a candidate we don't really support, simply because they represent our best chance of defeating someone whom we truly loathe. Our last election gave birth to 'strategic voting' campaigns, vote swapping, and many other aspects of voting that are anathaema to proper democratic function.

Why did BC-STV (and MMP for that matter) fail? As Steve Janke, obviously no fan of voting reform, quotes in his National Post article, "STV is complex and weird and difficult to explain." Now Steve Janke is a fool* (more on that later), but he hit the nail right on the head.

A voting proposal that takes more than 2 sentences to explain is bound to fail. Politics these days is all about the sound bite. It is something the Republicans have distilled to an art form in the U.S.: "Less government. Less taxation." It's an easy platform to understand, and you know instantly where you stand on it. The Democrats won, in no small part, because Obama was able to distill his platform into one small sentence: "Yes We Can." It wasn't exactly a platform, but these 3 words captured the imagination of America.

But I digress. BC-STV failed because it was too complex for people to understand, and most people back away from things they don't understand. I have a degree in Economics and History with a minor in political science. I'm no political analyst, but I consider myself a fairly astute student of Canadian politics. But when I read the various explanations of BC-STV, I was left scratching my head. Huh? My vote gets allocated where?

You can't go on TV and explain BC-STV in a sound bite. And that's the problem. Most people don't want to sit through a 5-minute explanation of a new voting system. They know something's wrong with the current one, but they prefer the devil they know to the one they don't.

Unfortunately, as with Stephane Dion's Green Shift carbon tax, voting reform is now a political hot potato that no one will touch for a long time. It will be years before we see its like again. And that's a crying shame, because our voting system is in dire need of repair.

If any of you want to buy my vote next election, I'll trade it for a pair of size 12 slippers and playoff tickets to see the Jays.

Mike Brcic

*Steve Janke is a fool, and a terrible journalist.

He states in his article, "Green voters are overwhelmingly upper middle class consumers who feel guilt over their rampant consumerism, and who want to assuage their guilt by the symbolic action of pounding a Green Party sign on their pesticide-soaked golf-green quality lawns."

I've been a Green voter for a long time, know a lot of Green Party supporters, and have been to many Green Party events. Green Party supporters come from all walks of life. A party that garnered almost 1,000,000 votes and 7% of the popular vote is not, as he states, a fringe party. It is a party that represents a wide cross-section of Canadians, united by a mutual concern about the health of our planet, the health of our citizens, and the state of our natural resources.

It's small wonder The National Post is bleeding red ink when they give valuable media space to fools.