OurStatusVille
"I don't hear anybody asking for this in the streets of British Columbia"
What's it all about this time Alfie?
Well, according to Ian Bailey of the Globe, the new leader of the BC Liberal Party, Mr. Andrew Wilkinson, does not hear anyone in B.C. which includes, presumably, his Upper West Cremeville riding (south of 16th Avenue division) telling him that they want anything to do with Prop. Rep. at the ballot box.
Because, after all, why would those fine folks in Mr. Wilkinson's riding of Vancouver Quilchena want to change a status quo that has made even the most modest abode in the area worth almost three million bucks.
As for the remaining 4 million British Columbians?
Well....
****
Regardless, didn't the good Mr. Wilkinson actually stay in the leadership race he eventually won due to a proportional representation formula that saw him narrowly squeak by Marky Mark's horse on the crucial 4th ballot despite the fact that said horse, Michael Lee, actually beat Mr. Wilkinson like a gong in total 'votes'?
Hmmmmm....
Hypochristy, revisited, served cold with an irony chaser.
Would'a thunk it!
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5 comments:
And as far as we know, Andy didn't even need any Russians.
Mayfair? Within a block of Dunbar and between 38th and 39th!
Wilkinson fails to acknowledge the presence of this issue over the past dozen years, everywhere in the country (in several provinces and federally—hmmm...enough for a constitutional amendment? Except we’re never sure about that 50%). Of course he’s playing political games and his partisanship is showing. It might be astute to champion the status quo single-member-plurality: it’s probably coin-toss close between it and a pro-rep alternative, although it’s just as probable SMP’s slight lead is due to incumbent advantage.
Yet Wilkinson is fishing while the Dippers are being coy. It’s entirely premature to characterize the proposed referendum as biased in the NDP’s favour, or biased against rural citizens, when the government has yet to clarify what alternative(s) will be on the ballot, how the referendum votes are to be compiled and interpreted, or even exactly when it will happen. Wilkinson desperately needs partisan contrast so, in lieu of the NDP’s rope-a-dope reticence to be anything but mysterious, he’s forced to dance with whomever the BC Liberals think they were elected by, in the last election by so-called “rural British Columbians.” First time that’s happened, so it’s hard to reckon a trend, especially there being other explanations, not least Christy’s disappointing leadership (the first and last mandate of her own), but notably also the solid opposition to KM’s TMX pipeline which is so strong it crosses party lines in the urban ridings the BC Liberals lost.
Whatever the reasons for electoral reform’s topicality, or whether they’re warranted or not, associating electoral systems—supposed to be absolutely impartial and non-partisan—with political partisanship—Wilkinson is unabashed, purely for his party’s advantage—is the worst way to discern which system is best. Recall that excessive partisanships were the roles JT deftly goaded his rivals into playing: after conspicuously relinquishing the Liberal majority on the special committee, he sat back and watched partisanship in the forms of the Conservative’s intransigent championing of SMP and the NDP’s petulant Nathan Cullen performing embarrassingly maudlin condescension of all systems not pro-rep, contaminating the process enough for JT to decree the promised reform “too divisive” to pursue further. Partisan gaming has both lobbed the volatile reform issue into the fire and destroyed any chance of it succeeding.
Let us acknowledge that “success” in this respect means producing a decisive referendum result by fair and democratic means, not changing the status quo to something else—that’s only a partisan success. It’s still up to voters to decide, but partisan propaganda, being biased by nature, is a poor way to elucidate that electoral reform has not failed if SMP prevails at referendum, that electoral systems are only part of what should be reviewed or reformed, and that if voters decide reform’s not about changing electoral systems, we then need to ask: what other part, if any, of the electoral process needs reforming? Those might include voting systems, parliamentary systems and protocols, political financing and donations, education, voter eligibility, citizens’ initiatives.
IMHO, one thing that desperately needs reforming is the process by which we decide if the electoral system needs changing and, if it does, how do we keep biased, partisan propaganda from obscuring the best action to take. I would start by requiring partisan politicians to recuse themselves from all aspects except authorizing a review and/or reform process (its design, voter education and correspondence, and democratically sound voter reference) and legislating the enabling law. The rest should be done by the proper agency: the Chief Electoral Office which is mandated to be ready with impeccable impartiality, and possessed of irrefutable credentials of expertise.
On the 4th ballot Reformers Watt & Lee had 71% of the votes and 65% of the points, yet it is the status quo which prevailed.
in round 4 there were 26,804 votes
Watts = 9,130, Lee = 9,842, Wilkinson = 7,832
in round 5 only 23,509 votes
Watts = 10,761, Wilkinson = 12,509
What happened on the other 3,295 ballots?
Was a the ballot not mandated to be fully filled to be eligible?
Dosome politicians suffer from credential inflation?
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