B.C.’s Referendum - Out With Barely a Whimper

If the majority of BC residents had voted for a change in how they elected their provincial legislature, there would have been loud cheers and celebrations. Such a decision would have made the news across the nation. But they did not vote for change. 61.3% of those who voted, voted to maintain the status quo. There was very little discussion in the news and certainly, there were no celebrations. All of which is not surprising.

It was, to say the least, a flawed process from the start. One of the primary reasons for calling this third referendum was based on the reasoning that the percentage of people who were voting in provincial elections had been decreasing because the voters did not feel that their votes had value; that because governments were being elected with less than a majority of popular votes, that meant that a majority of voters felt disenfranchised. Balderdash!!

In a 2000 report from Elections Canada*, one of the major reasons why people did not vote was that they just did not care. Nothing has changed since then. I would guess that if non-voters would be asked today, and if they were honest - they would give the same answer. It is both easy and popular to say that one did not vote because their vote did not matter. It would be embarrassing to say the truth - that they are just too lazy to think about it; or that they were so self-consumed by their own lives, they could not think of anything else. Not surprisingly only 42.6%** of those who were eligible to vote in the referendum, did so. People had a month to vote, it was a mail-in vote - so no one had to rearrange their lives to vote and still less the half of the people bothered to express an opinion

If as many people were upset over the first-past-the-post electoral system as the pundits for change argued, then surely there would have been more people voting in the referendum. People did not vote because it was just too much work for them to think about it, they just did not care. The fact that so many people did not vote is proof that the referendum trying to fix the problem the wrong way.

Why people vote or do not vote is an important issue. The resolution to it is critical for Canada’s capacity to survive as a democratic country. But like so many things in life - there are no quick fixes; there is not a single reason as to why fewer people vote now than 50 years ago. There is no single solution.

It is interesting to note how each electoral districts*** voted. It could be fascinating to determine if there was a relationship between annual average income and how the region voted. This analysis needs to be done to determine who drove this expensive and time-consuming desire for change and why.

I also wonder if there is a relationship between when the percentage of Canadians voting started to decrease and when we stopped recognizing that we had a duty to take care of each other; when voting started to be about me getting who I wanted to be elected because it was good for me, rather than who was good for the country.

*http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=loi&document=index&dir=tur/tud&lang=e&textonly=false
**https://electionsbcca.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcca/referendum/results.html
***https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://electionsbcca.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcca/referendum/2018-Referendum-Voting-Results-By-ED.xlsx