Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (British Columbia)

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The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform is a group created by the government of British Columbia, Canada to investigate changes to the provincial electoral system. On 25 October 2004, it proposed replacing the province's existing First Past the Post (FPTP) system with a Single Transferable Vote (STV) system: this recommendation was put to the electorate-at-large in a referendum held concurrently with the 2005 provincial election. The referendum required approval by 60% of votes and simple majorities in 60% of the 79 districts in order to pass: final results indicate that the referendum failed with only 57.7% of votes in favour, although it did have majority support in 77 of the 79 electoral districts.

[edit] History

During the 2001 provincial election, the Liberal Party promised to create a citizens' assembly to consider changes to the provincial electoral system (as opposed to forming a Royal Commission, as New Zealand did). The recommendation of the assembly would then be put as a referendum . In September 2002, Gordon Gibson was appointed to make recommendations on the composition and function of the assembly.

In December 2002, Gibson recommended an assembly composed of randomly selected citizens, two from each of the province's 79 electoral districts. The government adopted Gibson's recommendations in law in April 2003.

In August 2003, a pool of 15,800 names were selected from the voter roll. Selection into the Assembly continued until December. Two additional members, representing First Nations communities, were added after the selection of the original 158.

From January to August 2004, the Assembly went through a "Learning Phase", where the Assembly received experts and held public hearings so that the members can understand the different electoral systems in usage around the world and their various effects on the political process.

Between September and October 2004, the members deliberated over which electoral system to recommend. On October 23, the Assembly decided that if they were to recommend an alternative system, it would be a STV system, over a Mixed Member Proportional system also under consideration. The next day, the Assembly voted in favour of recommending the change from the FPTP system to STV.

On December 10th, the Final Report on Electoral Change, was presented to the B.C. legislature by the Assembly. It recommended changing the electoral system to a localized version of STV called BC-STV.