Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

2005 was a year of ideas, though really, all years are. The Tyee has two articles about the 15 big ideas for the past 12 months, the first covering peak oil; nanotechnology; parliaments-ready-to-govern; pandemics; Web 2.0; minority government; disaster relief (do we need relief from minority governments?) and same-sex marriage. The second article covers international relations between Canada and China; "future proofing" (“an inane and irritating bit of marketing hokum ready to leech any residual value from genuine thoughtfulness and package it as [...] ready-today solutions”); British Columbia's 'golden decade'; the cut and cover method of drilling for Vancouver's new rapid transit line, STV; COPE; and professional hockey's return. The articles are less about ideas than they are about the year's themes, but at least it discusses the ideas behind those themes.

2005 ended with a question from Edge: what is your dangerous idea? I haven't read the responses, but Dave Pollard did, adding what he believed to be dangerous ideas (each individual idea listed here are his wording, but check his article for citations): our civilization is in its final century; nature always bats last; the crowd is always wiser than the experts; the biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred; you never change things by fighting the existing reality; show, don't tell; human beings will be happier only when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again; people will listen when they're ready to listen and not before; and no one is in control.

Today is the British Columbia provincial election, and it looks like it will be a B.C. Liberal majority, though likely a 2-1 margin rather than the 35-1 margin as it stands now. I get two ballots, one for a referendum to change the electoral system and another for electing someone as my MLA. I will be voting Yes to the former and not at all in the latter. The origins of my support for STV can be found in Andrew Coyne's column last October on the proposed referendum. I'm no fan of the Liberals—their leader is their biggest liability—but I have to hand it to them: they kept their promise of asking British Columbians if they would like to change their electoral system.

Much unlike The Tyee and electionprediction.org, Sacha has a declared financial stake in his prediction: he predicts that the Liberals will win 52 seats, the NDP 25 seats, and the Greens 1 seat and Independent 1 seat as well. He also thinks the referendum will fail because not a high enough percentage vote for (he thinks there will be enough ridings voting for, but that is not enough).

At Urban Vancouver, the Oldest Living Blogger hosted a discussion on STV, in which I briefly participate.

Sacha has a description of the advance polling stations near his residence in British Columbia: “Once arriving at the election room, you hand the elections BC person your voter registration card. One person makes sure that you are on the list of voters and crosses your name off. Then another person writes your name, address and date on a piece of paper and gets you to sign it. You take this paper and hand it to a third person who gives you two numbered ballots. One of the ballots is for the candidate party you wish to vote for. The other is on the referendum for electoral reform. You walk behind a tall piece of cardboard, and mark an "X" next to your two choices and then fold the ballot. You give the ballot to the elections person and they rip off the numbers from the ballots. Then they give you your ballots back and you can stuff them in the ballot box.”

I had wondered whether there would be two separate ballots for the election, but now Sacha has confirmed that for me. I'd be surprised if STV passed: the opposition to it (the strongest opponents being political parties) has been silent, signalling confidence in its defeat. Regardless, depending on my schedule in the next couple of days—advance polling takes place until this Saturday—I'll try to make the advance poll. I will be voting Yes on STV, the reasoning being that the first-past-the-post system distorts an electorate's preferences, while STV, at least in theory, distorts it less so.

Sacha on the "Yes" campaign for STV: “The fact of the matter is that a lot more people out there stand to gain than lose, and they recognize that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape the electoral process in British Columbia. This is probably one of those rare moments where the political left and right can align on a particular issue.”

Sacha accuses an anti-STV writer of appealing to authority, making an incorrect legal judgment, and in general spreading FUD about the referendum question.

Sacha is already commenting on the election in British Columbia: he has so far covered the throne speech, the NDP strategy, predictions for this year's budget, the review of his predictions for the budget and his progress so far in the BC Election 2005 futures market. He has already covered and endorsed the STV referendum (I endorse it too as a "better than the current system" solution), so he is going to be my go-to guy for British Columbia election commentary.

Andrew Coyne reports about the British Columbia electoral reform committee's decision to recommend the single transferable vote to a referendum occuring on the same day as the provincial election: “the “committee” was made up, not of politicians or lawyers, but common citizens, with almost none of the jiggery-pokery that signals to folks the fix is in: other than a requirement of gender parity (one man and one woman from each riding) and the last-minute addition of two aboriginal members, the principle of random selection was in general respected, in keeping with another bedrock democratic assumption -- that people of good faith are capable of representing the interests of others besides themselves. Their deliberations were by all accounts transparently fair, with due weight given to competing systems, including the status quo. Moreover, both the government and the assembly were bound by a like constraint: that whatever was proposed would be put to the people in a referendum, coincident with the next provincial election. So the government could not bury the assembly’s recommendations, and the assembly could not run amok.”

I'm a political opponent of the B.C. Liberal Party, but they did absolutely the right thing by first setting a date on which the election would be held and by creating the electoral system reform committee and by not, as Coyne notes, meddling in the process. The established political forces—both business and unions and even the parties—are unenthusiastic to say the least of the new system. I'm unenthusiastic about single transferable vote (due mostly to ignorance of the implementation details), but I do agree that proportionality needs to be introduced into the political system in Canada. I'm a fan of Germany's electoral system, which mixes local representation with ideological representation—which gives everybody two votes. Yes, proportional systems sometimes give small parties more power than they should have, such as when they hold the balance of power. But the critics over-estimate the power such small parties hold, because even they need to compromise their values if they want to form the government.

Proportional representation introduces negotiation into the mix, and since the British Parliamentary system is set up as an adversarial process (even in physical terms, since the members of the Opposition sit on the other side of the governing party). The current system has the advantage of efficiency: bills the government wants passed will more than likely be passed. The very fact that the words "poison pill" and "rider" and "block" aren't in the Canadian political lexicon should be evidence enough of that. With efficiency comes danger, however, that the governing party governs only for the people that elected them, which is more often than not less than half of the population, and while efficiency is a worthwhile goal, it is not when the legislation is wrong-headed.

(Originally written on the bus.)