See you there Wednesday at noon at the Knoll outside the SUB.

The Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117463898334533

The blog post from a UBC prof?: http://hummingbird604.com/2011/04/13/ubc-vote-mob-rock-your-vote-wed-apr-20th-1200-1400/

Anyone else buzzing about it? Will there be a video? What’s the plan, is it secret? Are you excited?

Whatever makes you happy so long as you

1. tell EVERYONE
2. you go to the vote mob (unless you have an exam thatsokdontgoskippin)
3. you vote on May 2

U to the B to the C

Get your Vote On.

Find out more about votemobs at leadnow.ca

A federal election is coming in just four weeks. That means you’ll still have time to think about voting after your exams are over.  If young people actually come out this election and vote at the same rate of the rest of the population it will have a huge, unpredicted impact on the outcome of the election.  There is a lot at stake this election that should be important to young people.  The current government has been fundamentally disrespecting the democratic institutions of our country and has made a lot of policy choices that young people need to think about in terms of their long term benefit.

One of the most exciting things happening this election is a new movement called Lead Now. They are gathering opinions from the people of Canada about what is important to them and they’ve come up with four broad types of issues that are important to Canadians: Health, Environment, Economic Opportunity and Equality and, wait for it, Democracy.

If you agree with these topics, or even if you don’t, you owe it to yourself to stand up and be heard this election.  They aren’t expecting young to vote so your opinions are not part of the predictions or something the party leaders worry about. So UBC needs to make a loud statement that this is a place that cares about democracy and this election, young people are going to do the unexpected and vote. We need to have a vote mob.

And Just to get you riled up to here are two videos. Rick Mercer’s call out to young people to vote. And the University of Victoria’s (WHAAAA????) awesome video for THEIR vote mob.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we can let them have a more awesome vote mob than us (hint: it’s easy to beat nothing)

Maybe these people could make a video?

Your move UBC.

Update: some thoughts on why Arcade Fire has the perfect song for a votemob lipdub.

Will your party commit to working with other opposition parties to address the democratic deficit in Canada? Fair Vote Canada recently sent a letter to your party and the others suggesting some ways to improve democratic representation in Canada.  This is more important now than ever when we have to endure a Conservative minority government that was rejected by 60% of the population and who are willing to reckless abuse the constitutional powers of government to shut down debate and investigations.

So, Mr. Ignatieff, will you commit to working with the other opposition parties to ensure that Canada gets the representation that they actually vote for in Ottawa?

Thank you.

I’ll let you know what he says later…

On a somewhat related topic, here is  a repost from my PopTheStack blog on some reforms being discussed to avoid some of these issues arising again in the future [in Ottawa, I'm not sure if anything can save the AMS from future scandals ]

Reposted from popthestack.wordpress.com

A great article on the Globe and Mail about Harper’s Senate reform plans. As always, Senate reform is a more complex issue than it first appears. Harper likely knows this and knows that his overly simple solution will never be implemented anyways because as the author points out, there are a lot of drawbacks to the West of taking the first small step to reform and going no further.

But perhaps the best part of this article is a comment by one Jim Q which I am repost below in its entirety, he proposes a PR solution to give the senate legitimacy without any consitutional changes, and I must say, its so crazy it might just work.

Here’s Jim Q’s proposal. (Jim if you’re out there and take issue with my reposting please let me know)

Oh my dear Lord.

Meaningful Senate reform without constitutional change is the easiest thing in the g-d world, if Harper were actually serious about it (as it happens, his hair-brained doomed-to-fail approach demonstrates his lookiing for a wedge issue more than anything…)

Here’s the formula:

1.) Keep current distributions.
2.) Make the elections nationally Proportional Representation.
3.) Have the HoC leaders/party leaders submit lists of prospective Senators before an election.
4.) Empty Senate seats are filled round-robin based on the proportional vote.
5.) Put a low-cap minimum PR vote at 7-10% to keep out the crazies.

This way, the lesser-populated regions STILL have the protection of extra representation,

BUT every voter has an equal voice in the election. There may be more seats in NFLD, but they’re being elected with Quebec and Alberta votes as much as Atlantic.

Finally, this would ensure that the Senate is not just a byzantine added layer of useless politicos. In Harper’s plan, the Senate is essentially a redundant extra HoC, whose only purpose will be to suck up time and money with no added benefit.

His a national PR Senate, there’s a real difference in the type of input given.

There could and would be Liberal Senators from Alberta, Conservative Senators from NFLD and a Green from somewhere (at 13.4%, they deserve ONE person, at least.)

This means a different perspective on local problems, and a voice for people who right now voted for the government (or major opposition party) but have no representation in them.

No province would ever again be entirely left out of cabinet.

Best of all, because there’s no FORMAL change to the system (we’d just be changing the convention on advice to the GG on appointments) everyone could take their demands for a constitutional reform and shove them.

But, again, this assumes one actually wants an elected Senate. With Harper, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Me too Jim. I’m not a huge proponent of Senate reform because I worry about the deadlock that plagues the American system. But this is the kind of reform I could get behind. It would introduce PR on the national stage, it would reduce the democratic deficit felt by also-ran parties across the country, it would add a check to the unbalanced power of a majority parliament (if we ever get one again) and if done right it should heal some of the East vs. West wounds by adding something to the fabric of our nation that the West is so passionate about.

Along these lines I have another proposal that wouldn’t require constitutional changes but would remove the reckless power of the PM to prorogue parliament whenever he feels uncomfortable.  Hold a national election to select the next Governor General.  We could use the same process as we do now with a committee to generate a list of nominees and there would be no changes required since the PM would still be appointing the GG.  The only change would be that there would be a law that says the PM must adhere to the advice of the electorate when choosing the GG.  This could be a single nation-wide vote, no ridings, no electoral colleges, just plain and simple vote counting.  The Governor General would retain the same rights that they do now except now they would be able to actually make a decision if needed.

In the recent request of the PM to prorogue parliament for the second year in a row in the middle of a contentious opposition investigation, the GG could honestly look at the situation and decide if proroguement were appropriate.  They could refuse the PM what now is an implicite right and force him to face the opposition in an open vote in parliament, possibly handing control of parliament to another party or coalition of parties who can command the confidence of the House.  This is how our democracy works, and it should work this way except that the anachronism of an appointment head of state makes it impossible for that head of state to really take legitimate action.  A simple election would solve that and avoid all the constitutional hand wringing about becoming a republic or abandoning the monarchy.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if one of our opposition parties actually proposed something constructive such as the above proposals? Maybe then Canadians would get interested in politics, would pay attention to the possibility of a real change in how our government functions and represents us.

Seems relevant.  So why is it I can’t seem to pick a side?

Point, the first.

Last fall I asked Blake Frederick not to step down in the wake of his first scandal.  That scandal, SlateGate?,  happened before he was even confirmed president in a complaint that he was running as part of a banned slate.  Well now Mr. Frederick and Tim Chu, the VP External,  are both being asked to step down again.  This time however, it is by the AMS council in a unanimous censure of his letter to the UN.  As you have no doubt heard already (check here, here, here and here is you want the full scope of disgust, misunderstanding, facts and support), those “human rights violations” regard the increasingly high tuition fees at UBC which, they argue, are in contravention of the international convenent of human rights of which Canada is a signatory.

I didn’t want Frederick to step down because he was the best winnable choice for president who might vigorously help to get the AMS behind the campaign to pass the referendum on proportional representation.  Despite the best efforts of FairVoteUBC the AMS council did not endorse BC-STV and as we all know it failed to pass provincewide, achieving only 40% support.  Remember, correlation does not imply causation, just saying...

So, Frederick’s argument that the AMS council is not exactly interested in making any kind of statements, even when it is in favour of perfectly rational proposals such as BC-STV which was widely supported by young people and would benefit students disproportionately to many other groups (pun intended).

But…

That brings me to my second point.  This proposal, to ask the UN to investigate BC for “human rights violations” due to rising tuition fees is not an obviously rational and effective proposal.  It’s not clear it makes any sense, it demeans the notion of human rights and it’s not clear that it will be effective.  Oh, scratch that, it is clear because SFU did the same thing 5 years ago and never heard a peep from the UN. Its just a bit silly really.

Third point, Frederick and Chu sent this request to the UN, without getting approval of the AMS council.  They have since apologized, but not really. Their argument is that the council isn’t activist enough and that their attempt to impeach him is an attempt by a small group of students to overthrough the democratic will of UBC students.

Arguing that you needed to go around the rules government because the government wasn’t doing things the way you want isn’t what elected presidents say, its what dictators say.  So I was surprised Frederick made that argument.  Arguing that the president’s 6% of the campus population vote tally is more legitimate than the small band of AMS councillors, who are also elected, is not very compelling.

So what’s my conclusion? Should Frederick resign? It looks like 2 strikes against Frederick and 1 strike against the AMS council.  But I’m enough of a Bayesian to think there’s a whole lot I still don’t know about all this, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to.

So my advice to Frederick, Chu, the other execs and the AMS council: grow up and start talking to each other, put your personality battles aside or step aside if you can’t handle it.  Also, step back and get some perspective here, we all want to change the world for the better, how can you best improve the lives of the students you claim to represent?

Mark Crowley

If you said yes and you are interested in campus politics and like writing then get in touch with us! We need writers!  (email to fairvoteubc  at symbol gmail dot symbol com )

Last year FairVoteUBC was a voice for progressive change in our voting system working to get proportional voting passed for voting on campus and organizing to support the BC-STV referendum.  Read through our past posts to get a sense of what we’re about.  If you agreee with some of what we said last year you could be one of our writers this year.  If you are accepted as a writer you will have total freedom for your own articles.  The hope is that we can get a few people to cover the upcoming AMS elections on campus and other democratic deficit issues concerning students.

If we can then we could enter the VFM competition for next year.  For our election coverage last year we received $700 but we also won the regular, smaller VFMs for several months before election season.

FairVoteUBC is an ally to other fairvote organizations such as FairVoteBC and Fair Vote Canada but is not officially a member or constrained by those organizations.

Please let us know if you are interested.

Mark Crowley – FairVoteUBC Webmaster

UBC is starting to fire up and soon it will be swarming with young people excited about learning …   Statistically they will probably be even less excited about a federal election.  Many young people are disconnected and cynical about our democracy.  This is understandable given the very disappointing result of the last BC election.  I don’t mean the party result, I’ll stay neutral about that, I mean the BC-STV referendum result.  Young people overwhelmingly supported switching BC’s electoral system to a proportional one that would have more fairly represented the wishes of the electorate.  Unfortunately, their parents believed the fear mongering and voted it down giving only 40% support when 60% was needed.

It’s easy to become depressed about changing the world when you can’t even make a sensible change to your own province.  There has been lots of discussion of what went wrong with that campaign but the truth is, in one sense, it doesn’t matter why it failed.  We need to keep trying to change our democracy, to improve it, to move it into the 21st century where we, all of us at UBC especially, will spend the bulk of our lives.  We live in a 21st century democracy with a 19th Century electoral process.  There are many ways it can be fixed, and all of us who want change need to work together for some change regardless of the details.  Any progress is progress.

So this year at UBC, we at the FairVoteUBC club will be asking you to put aside apathy and cynicism about democracy.  About politics sure, but not democracy.  We’ll likely be having a federal election before we even have our first term exams.  Then in the the spring we’ll have a campus election.  Last year we used a proportional system for the first time on campus, Condorcet ranked voting. Will we do so again this year, can we do even better? Can we use an STV style system to show everyone that we were not happy with the referendum result?  Can we send a louder message to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Ottawa?  Can we demand that the politicians who will be coming to woo us on this campus make electoral reform a top priority?

We need your help to find out.  We need your ideas. We need your energy. Let us know if you’ll join us (face/twit). And we’ll let you know where to find us on campus soon.

For #fairvoters, the “Proportional representation and fairness in voting” priority is currently ranked 15, surely we can take it higher.

Graduate Student Society stands with its Iranian Students at UBC and
would like to give its sincere condolence to the loss of the students
who lost their lives during the protest in Iran. We recognize that many
of our graduate students may have family, friendship, professional and
research ties in the region. If you require assistance or support in
light of this difficult situation, Graduate Student Society has an
Advocacy cell which can be contacted.

Ph 604-822-3173
Mrigank Sharma
VP Academic & External
vpexternal@gss.ubc.ca
(604) 822-3173

Thank you for your support of BC-STV and electoral reform in the referendum last month. We are all disappointed that we did not win. However, as reform is still essential, we are picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and moving on.

We want your ideas at the June Conference

Will you continue to help? The next two steps are:

1. Contribute ideas to our pre-conference website at http://www.fvbcfuture.pbworks.com, and
2. Bring your energy to our Referendum Review and Future Strategies Conference in Surrey on June 20, 21. To register for the conference go to: http://fvbcreflections.eventbrite.com

Whether you can attend this conference in person or not, we need your ideas and input to ensure that our deliberations reflect the opinions of our en tire supporter base.  To facilitate this, we have created a wiki-type website at www.fvbcfuture.pbworks.com.

You can gain access to this site by visiting it and clicking on “request access” to receive a user name and password. There, you can submit both questions or issues you’d like to see addressed by FVBC and proposals you have for how we can most effectively move forward. Those attending the conference should see themselves as representatives of all supporters, and as such, they should bring to the conference the suggestions from their colleagues. Those suggestions are extremely important and will be grist for the conference on Sunday, but only to the extent that they propose them.

But we all need hope and we need to all stick together and figure out what comes next,  especially for the online masses who are so incredibly behind reform.  So, if you aren’t willing to admit defeat, then you can do a few things right now:

1. Join Fair Vote Canada if you haven’t already
2. Join these facebook groups to show your support and discuss the next steps for change :
   • Canadians for Democratic Change
   • Fair Vote Canada
   • Electoral Reform in Canada
3. If you’re really keen want and have a social media footprint you want to leverage for this cause join the discussion on this wiki.

And above all, don’t lose hope, and don’t let people tell you that now its decided for all time because people don’t want change.  That’s not what they were asked!

Mark Crowley

Referendum Results Discussion – Mistakes in the Referendum Campaign

Why did BC-STV fail miserably this time around? Conditions for electoral reform were much less favorable this time around.  The 2005 election results weren’t as clearly ‘wrong’ to the general voter as the 2001 results, the Citizens’ Assembly was no longer fresh in people’s minds, people were afraid of change because of the financial crisis, and, most importantly, there was a funded ‘No side’.

Referenda in General: I am quite interested in direct democracy in addition to electoral reform, and have read quite a bit about it (several years ago).  It is not uncommon for good initiatives to be voted down by a confused public, particularly when a lot of money is being spent for and against the initiative.  Unless the proposal is very simple (And changing to a more proportional voting system is not), the public by and large does not spend the time to understand the complexities of the proposal, is easily confused, and tends to vote for the status quo.  In fact, I’ve heard from my Uncle that referenda are sometimes defeated by ‘confusion campaigns’ in the US – the ‘No side,’ says all sorts of different things which are sometimes contradictory or false, confusing the public and ultimately securing a vote for the status quo.

The ‘No’ Side: In BC we did hear some lies (i.e. about the Citizens’ Assembly thinking FPTP is fair) and contradictory statements (i.e. about proportionality) from the No Side, but by-and-large most of what we heard was dubious claims, spin, cherry-picking of facts, and some very misleading but technically correct statements.  I think there are a few actual downsides to BC-STV, but the ‘No Side’ didn’t focus on these.  The one thing that I do agree with is that BC-STV counting is complex when compared to that of FPTP.  But it’s simple enough to do by hand and can be scrutineered, so I see this as a problem only when trying to sell it to a public that is unfamiliar with it.  Also, I’ve never entirely understood northerner’s concerns with bigger ridings (Nor the No side’s if they actually have one), and the Citizens’ Assembly members from northern BC did prefer not to have single-seaters, so I’m not convinced there’s a real issue here.

How could the campaign have been run better? I learned early on that most people aren’t interested in spending much time learning/thinking about BC-STV, and without some understanding of STV and its history it would be near impossible for them to distinguish between valid and invalid arguments for/against it.  The only way that we could sell STV to these people IMO is to tell the story of the Citizens’ Assembly – of how BC-STV was designed by voters for voters through a very in-depth learning and deliberation process.  Ideally, the BC-STV campaign would have been run under a name like “Friends of the Citizens Assembly,” with Citizens’ Assembly Alumni as spokespeople and in charge (with lots of support from everyone else).  Otherwise, why should people trust us more than the ‘No Side’?  Unfortunately, the Citizens’ Assembly was not emphasized by the yes side.

Also, the yes campaign provided less information in its literature than I would have liked – which could have helped win over opinion leaders and laid a better basis for future electoral reform efforts.

The Future of Electoral Reform in BC

Provincially: Sadly BC-STV and most likely electoral reform will not be revisited provincially for a few decades.  The NDP promised that if BC-STV failed to reach 60% it would hold a referendum on MMP, which could only be intended to kill the issue permanently while making the NDP look good.  I have heard from NDPers that, while the membership is receptive and even passed a policy supporting MMP, most influential NDP insiders (Like Bill Tieleman and David Schreck who pretty much ran the No campaign) are dead against proportional representation.  An MMP system designed by politicians would IMO fail far worse than BC-STV, and that would be the end of it.

Ultimately, our system will again produce some very skewed election results, and electoral reform will be revisited in BC.

Municipally and in Smaller Organizations: One reason why the No campaign was so effective is that STV is very unfamiliar to most British Columbians, so they could claim whatever they wanted and most people wouldn’t know better.  Perhaps reform could be started at the municipal or smaller level where there are also many problems with the current voting system.  Then, with raised familiarity, reform at higher levels of government will come more easily.  At this point in time it may be necessary to promote other systems such as SPAV (Sequential Proportional Approval Voting) which have not had their names blackened, which is unfortunate, since they aren’t quite as good as STV.

In particular, at the university level support for voting reform is strong, student politicians don’t have a strong vested interest in their current voting systems, and there is interest in fairer results and in engaging more students in students politics.  All that is needed is a bit of support/interest from someone who is knowledgeable about voting systems and about the Open STV software.  I think this is a good place to start! (Or in my case continue).  [Edit: Vancity and MEC are also apparently good places to start - Vancity now uses multi-member plurality, which is horrible!]

Federally: Federally the need for electoral reform is very clear, and could possibly be implemented by a Liberal-NDP majority coalition.

P.S. I recall a Citizens’ Assembly member saying that initially he thought STV was all about formulas, but when they figured out what it did then they started to like it more.  So STV is definitely not the easiest thing to sell to an inattentive public.

P.P.S. While I am critical of some of the decisions they made (not emphasizing the Citizens’ Assembly), I do want to thank the directors of British Columbians for BC-STV for their hard work.

Thousands of people across BC and Canada have been woken up to the need for change in the past year.  I had never been involved in politics until last fall when the arguments about the Coalition awoke me to the widespread lack of understanding of our democracy.  Now I have experienced first hand with many others how hard it is to bring about change.

But change is needed.

From the artificial choice between two parties in BC to the continuing minority trials in Ottawa to the growing attention on vote swapping it is clear that our democracy is broken and voters know it. Dispersed voices, such as the Greens are not heard.  Concentrated voices such as the Bloc are heard beyond their actual strength.  Everywhere, voter turnout is lower than ever before and the choices presented to the voter seem more and more meaningless.

So brace yourself, and take a look at the official results:
http://results.elections.bc.ca/REF-2009-001.html

(make sure you look at which cities voted, the areas with the most volunteers, Victoria and Vancouver, did much better. One next step could be to get those city councils to institute STV for municipal elections)

Even StudentVote, which gives high school and elementary students the opportunity to practice voting didn’t do much better. Young people generally support reform more than older people but these students still did not have nearly enough support to pass the reform:

http://www.studentvote.ca/bc/results2009/index.php

To make you feel a bit better, or maybe worse, take a look at these results of how this election might have turned out if we’d been using STV.

Someday soon, the media, the politicians and the Canadian public will connect these dots and realize change is needed. Now our job is to continue working to make that happen.

I have been so honoured to work with and have been deeply impressed by all of the people I have met while volunteering to campaign for STV.  The response online was especially robust but even on the street I can remember the dozens of people who had that lightbulb of hope go off right in front of me.  And of course many people gave money to help the campaign, I wasn’t involved in that but it was essential to get the level of visibility we did achieve.  Thank you to everyone who helped in any way. We did a good thing, and now it seems it was just one  battle of many to come.  But we shall not surrender.

If you aren’t willing to admit defeat either, then you can do two things right now

1. Join Fair Vote Canada if you haven’t already
2. Join this facebook group : Canadians for Democratic Change to keep the discussion going and let the politicians and the media know what Canadian voters demand out of democracy and their representatives.

But it doesn’t have to be that way!  Democracy isn’t like hockey, there doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser.  Everyone can win if we believe it and make a rational choice.  That’s what STV is all about, finding a way to let everyone have a say and stop running democracy like its a horserace.  Democracy is about representation not about winning and losing.  When we vote, we are trying to select sensible people to represent us.  Under STV you get to help select 3-7 people rather than just one.  Who can argue with that?

So if you haven’t already, get out and vote for STV, and I guess vote for a party too if you can figure out who to choose.  But if we make the right decision, then  next time it will be different.  Next time, you’ll be able to vote honestly and know that your vote won’t be wasted.

If you are on twitter please consider adding a few tweets today with the #bcstv tag and the #bcelection tag, I’d love to see it trending today on the twitter sidebar or on What the Trend, last night half the trending topics were about the Chicago – Vancouver hockey game, so don’t say we can’t do it.

Good luck BC — the rest of Canada is watching, lets show them what the West beyond the West can think outside the box.

Also, here is an absolutely excellent 6.5min video by Christie Clark about why she supports STV now that she is no longer a politician.
–
-Bruce

Apologies for the spamishness of this e-mail.  Please pass this on to your address book by Bcc.

Hi,

As you know, there will be a Provincial Referendum on Tuesday May 12^th to determine which electoral system we will use in future provincial elections, First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) or the Single Transferable Vote (BC-STV) as recommended by the BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

You may recall that I was a member of the Citizens’ Assembly.  I’m sending you this e-mail so that you will make a more informed choice on May 12^th.  I’m also hoping that you might forward this e-mail on to your friends.

Attached is a flyer I wrote myself.  It provides the most concise information about BC-STV that I could fit onto two pages.  As a member of the Citizens’ Assembly, I thought this perspective might be helpful to voters.

A complete but concise argument: BC-STV is the better system.

BC-STV vs FPTP (see attached flyer)

The simplest argument: Who are you going to trust, voters or people with something to lose?

The 2001 Provincial Legislature determined that the current First-Past-the-Post electoral system is severely flawed and unanimously created the BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform to find a better electoral system.

The Assembly was composed of 160 randomly selected, ordinary, non-partisan voters who spent 11 months learning about electoral systems, consulting with the public and examining how electoral systems work in practice (including all the No STV campaign accusations/issues).

By a 95% consensus, the Assembly recommended to their fellow voters that we adopt the BC-STV electoral system because it would provide:

1. Fair representation (the percentage of seats a party gets would be close to the percentage of votes a party gets),

2. Vastly improved local representation and accountability,

3. More voter choice,

4. More power for voters in determining government policy,

5. Representation by an MLA you voted for (80%+ with BC-STV vs. 50%^+/_ with FPTP),

6. Stable government and effective public policy development.

On the other hand, there are the opponents of BC-STV who are almost entirely comprised of ex-MLAs, political insiders, party strategists, big business and big labour; precisely the people BC-STV would be taking power away from.

The No STV ads in the papers, radio and TV are full of inaccuracies, misleading statements and outright lies (I hate to have to say it).  Disappointing?  Yes.  Surprising?  Actually, I was surprised.  Their campaign is about creating fear and division.  Haven’t we had enough of that?

As Members of the Citizens’ Assembly, it would have been virtually impossible for us to mislead the public in this way.  Firstly, we had and have nothing at stake, and secondly, our transparent public process wouldn’t have allowed it.

If BC-STV was really as bad as they portray it, could it ever have been recommended by 160 dedicated voters who worked on the problem for almost a year?  The No STV’s fabricated case against BC-STV is simply way over the top.  We would have had to have been smoking something to have recommended the system they portray as STV.

So, who should we trust?  Ordinary voters or political insiders who would say and do anything to keep their influence?

Do we want a simple system, or one that works properly?  It’s your choice.

Fact sheets:

Citizens’ Assembly Fact Sheet

BC-STV Fact Sheet

BC-STV Counting Process

Some good videos:

Citizens’ Assembly and Animation from 2005 (Description of BC-STV system, voting and counting)

Christie Clark

John Cleese (a UK humorous perspective on STV)

Other Videos

Websites to visit:

www.STV.ca (Has a nice video about the “complicated” counting system)

www.CitizensAssembly.bc.ca (for original documentation of the Assembly process)

www.STVinfo.ca/ (Fact sheets, videos and other helpful info)

I hope this helps.  The best vote is an informed vote.

If you have found this useful, please pass it on to your friends.

Thanks.

Craig Henschel

Member, BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform

Supporting the Recommendation of The BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Make Your Vote Count.  Support BC-STV.

Take  a look at the events map, there are some people planning to cover skytrains in vancouver and maybe bridges too so that no one can get home tonight without having to think about BC-STV again, at least for a second.

If you haven’t already, take a look at this video from Christy Clark, former Deputy Premier of BC and current host on CKNW.  Be sure to rate it with five stars and leave a comment. This has drawn some attention and some people think it may be turning the tide in our favour.  We’ll see tomorrow night.

• Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians
• Andrew Coyne, journalist, Macleans, National Post columnist
• Bruce Cox, Executive Director, Greenpeace Canada
• Kim Elliott, Publisher, rabble.ca
• Andrea Horwath, Leader, Ontario NDP
• Tom Kent, former chief advisor to Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson
• Naomi Klein, author
• Preston Manning, former Reform Party leader
• Elizabeth May, leader Green Party of Canada
• Farley Mowat, author
• Walter Pitman, former NDP MP, former President, Canadian Civil Liberties Assoc.
• Hugh Segal, Senator, Conservative Party, former PC leadership candidate
• Lois Wilson, former President, World Council of Churches, former Senator
• (US) Krist Novoselic, musician, formerly of Nirvana, currently Chair, Fair Vote (US)

Never thought I’d see Naomi Klein, Preston Manning, Elizabeth May and Farley Mowat together in any list of any kind.

Go BC-STV!….and go Canucks!

Andrew Coyne (editor : Macleans Magazine) : A Vote That Really Counts

Christy Clark (Host on CKNW and former BC Deputy Premier) : Why I’m Supporting STV — youtube video