Vote PR BC

04/01/2026

We were very angry to hear today's announcement from the Premier's office about the new voting system he plans to impose on BC. Read the news story from the online newspaper The Ty-Yee below:

"Premier's Choice Voting" Coming Soon to BC

In a move that UBC political scientists are already calling “bold,” “audacious,” and “deeply post-democratic,” Premier David Ebee today announced his government’s plan to modernize BC’s electoral system. The new model – called “Premier’s Choice Voting” (PCV) – will preserve everything British Columbians love most about elections, just adding what Ebee calls “a few modest administrative improvements.”

“I’ve been taking heat for deciding on my own to deep-six the Special Committee [on Democratic and Electoral Reform]’s call to have voters figure out how to elect us politicians. In my defence, I was pretty traumatized by our last close call with changing to a fairer way of voting – I’m just not interested in that” said Ebee.

“But my critics have a point – we can't keep pretending, much as I'd like to, that the committee never met and recommended we continue to publicly discuss voting reform," Ebee explained. “So under my innovative Premier’s Choice Voting system, citizens will still go to the polls, mark their ballots, and feel that familiar sense of civic pride. The huge step forward for BC is that, rather than automatically declaring the candidate with the most votes elected, I will personally review the results and decide who actually gets each seat. This will ensure we maintain stability while reflecting the diverse interests of... well, me.”

Ebee dismissed critics who said the system lacks transparency or fairness. “That’s old-school thinking,” he said. “After reading the recent decisions in Fair Voting BC’s charter challenge case, it’s clear the courts have confirmed that our right to vote has nothing to do with the results of an election. As long as every British Columbian gets to drop a piece of paper in a box and see it counted, their democratic rights are fully respected. Whether that paper affects who’s elected is – legally speaking – irrelevant.”

Asked whether this marked a retreat from his earlier stated commitment to “strengthening democracy,” Ebee was unrepentant. “Well, I was certainly surprised that the Special Committee thought citizens should set the voting rules, especially since most of the members were from my own party – they should have known better. And an assembly would be such a distraction – imagine all the attention the media would give it – they wouldn’t have any time to focus on me. Then I remembered that Truedough decided it was actually his choice to make federally, so I realized I could do the same and settle the issue once and for all for BC.”

Fair Voting BC President Antony Hodgson reacted with a mixture of disbelief and admiration. “In a perverse way, you have to respect the Premier’s intellectual honesty here,” he said. “For twenty years we’ve been saying that First-Past-the-Post unfairly benefits the party in power, ignoring what voters actually want. Ebee is just making explicit what our voting system already does. His move is the logical next step in consolidating power.”

The Premier was careful to stress that opposition voices would still be represented. “Voters can trust me to name a few BC United and Green MLAs,” he said, “just to keep us honest and to preserve the illusion of debate. Maybe even one Conservative, depending on polling.”

Pollster Mario Cansako said early reaction was mixed. “When we asked British Columbians how they felt about Premier’s Choice Voting, 54% said they didn’t understand how it worked, 27% hadn't heard about it, and the rest said they’d support it if it ‘kept the other guys out.’ If that’s not a mandate, I don’t know what is.”

Ebee’s communications director defended the plan on efficiency grounds. “Former PM Kim Campbell once said, “an election is no time to discuss serious issues”, and voters rarely make the right choices anyway. The Premier’s approach streamlines democracy for the 21st century and makes sure we get the right outcome every time.”

Even longtime electoral reform skeptic Bill Teelman didn't object. “I’ve always said proportional representation is too complicated,” he said. “Premier’s Choice is dead simple: let the guy in charge sort it out. It keeps single-member ridings, wastes most votes, and ensures a strong NDP government in perpetuity. Honestly, I don’t see any downside.”

Rob Bottarel, a Green Party MLA and member of the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform, sounded resigned. “When we ended our confidence and supply agreement with the NDP, we thought that might push them toward more collaboration and accountability,” he said. “Turns out we just freed up their schedule. I suppose if the Premier’s going to decide everything himself anyway, it’s nice that he might let me keep my job.”

Asked for any final thoughts, Hodgson sighed. “You have to be careful what you wish for. We asked for a citizens’ assembly to help us design a fair system. The problem is we ended up with an assembly of only one person. On the plus side, voters won’t need to stress anymore about how they’ll vote – it’ll be obvious to everyone that voting is largely for show, just as it’s actually always been under First-Past-the-Post.”

When pressed to explain why voters should still bother turning out under the new system, Ebee waxed philosophical. “Voting will remain an important exercise in hope,” he said. “People can feel good knowing they’ve participated in a process that’s fully constitutional and 100% compatible with recent judicial interpretations of the Charter. That’s democracy done right.” Flashing a grin, Ebee added: “Only a Fool would disagree.”

We'll keep you apprised of any actions we take in response to this distressing development!

Yours for a stronger democracy,

Antony Hodgson
President, Fair Voting BC

Image of BC Legislature by Sam https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BC-Legislative-Assembly-Chamber.jpg; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Creative_Commons

09/26/2023

Just checked out the Ontario Superior Court in preparation for tomorrow's opening day in the Charter Challenge! (https://www.charterchallenge.ca). Stay tuned as we present our case over the next three days that it's unconstitutional to deny effective representation to more than half the voters.

04/01/2023

Fair Voting BC Introduces Second-Past-the-Post Electoral Reform Proposal!

Fair Voting BC is delighted to introduce today an exciting new electoral reform proposal called Second-Past-the-Post (SPTP).

In making this announcement, FVBC President Antony Hodgson said “Many Canadians are deeply concerned that the way we vote now ignores the voices of half the voters and prevents their concerns from being represented in Parliament. They have become increasingly frustrated over the past few years that efforts to reform the system have been so strongly resisted by those who hold the levers of power. They got seriously pi**ed off when Justin Trudeau promised over 1800 times in the runup to the 2015 election to fix things and then said “Oops – just kidding – my bad” when the Electoral Reform Committee that he couldn’t avoid setting up accidentally took him seriously once he was in power.”

“That really ticked us off”, said Hodgson, “because for the past decade lots of us had thought reform opponents were sincere when they expressed concern that letting Canadians elect who they actually want as MPs would crash democracy by letting the 60% of us who prefer extremists (i.e., those who didn’t vote for the Liberals in 2015) elect a majority totalitarian government, so we invested a ton of time in coming up with super-creative ways of voting that would make sure that, whatever happened, the Liberals would still be assured of winning a majority unless two-thirds of the voters turned out to be extremists, but would still give lefties in Alberta and righties in Toronto a few token MPs. But despite our efforts, Trudeau shut down the process and shelved all these ideas.”

“Clearly, our strategy was wrong”, said Hodgson. “All those proposals gave reform opponents talking points that the media couldn’t resist. In retrospect, we should have put forward a proposal that wasn’t vulnerable to these criticisms. After nearly seven years of intensive deliberations with leading political scientists across Canada, we’ve finally hit on the solution! We call it ‘Second-Past-the-Post’ (SPTP)”.

“SPTP is deviously simple”, explained Hodgson. “We would run elections exactly the way we currently do – single member districts, mark-an-X ballots, etc. – except that we’d elect the person who comes second in every district, not the one who comes first.”

Fair Voting BC reports that, had SPTP been used in the 2021 election, NDP supporters would finally have elected some MPs in Alberta and Conservative supporters would have elected MPs in Toronto. Nationwide, the results would have been pretty proportional – the Conservatives would have won 125 seats (37% of the seats on 34% of the vote), the Liberals would have come second with 94 (28% on 33% of the vote), the NDP would have won 78 (23% on 18% of the vote), the BQ 35 (10% on 8% of the vote), and the PPC 6 (2% on 5% of the vote), though there would have been a notable dearth of Conservative MPs from Alberta.

“Damn”, said noted electoral reform opponent Bill Tieleman. “I have to grudgingly admit that those electoral reform advocates have finally done it. I quite like SPTP. Even though it’s pretty proportional and gives the most seats to the party whose candidates won the most votes, which I usually oppose, it still keeps single member districts and screws more than half the voters in each of them – those are my main goals when considering any voting system. And I secretly kinda like it that the NDP would finally get a reasonable share of the seats, even though I’ve never publicly given a rat’s ass about their fortunes in previous referendums.”

Prime Minister Trudeau commented that “I don’t like it that the Conservatives would win more votes and more seats than us, so there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d support this, but I guess the effect would be the same as what we have now. We’d still form government with the NDP’s support, so it wouldn’t really work out too badly for us. If the NDP had the guts to make adopting SPTP a condition of supporting us in the next session, I guess we’d have to suck it up, but they probably won’t do that.”

Asked for any final comments, Hodgson noted that “getting SPTP adopted in Canada at the moment is probably a fool’s errand, but we’re committed to giving more Canadians a voice in Parliament, so we won’t stop trying.”

10/18/2022

Very excited to share that we now have a court date for our Charter Challenge for Fair Voting - next September, we'll be asking the Ontario Superior Court to rule that the First Past the Post voting system is unconstitutional because it denies so many voters effective representation in parliament!

We are very excited to share that the Charter Challenge now has a court date! Our case will be heard September 25 - 27, 2023 in Toronto.