The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, while doubtless sincere and committed, has presented us with a dubious proposal born out of a patently non-democratic process

By Stephen Hume
The Vancouver Sun , Saturday, November 06, 2004

Now that the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform has enjoyed its extended honeymoon, grant this curmudgeon a few persnickety second thoughts about the so-called exercise in democracy and its apparent conclusions thus far.

I say it is a "so-called" exercise in democracy because, wise and benevolent as the 161 members of the assembly undoubtedly are, being selected rather than elected makes the process rather less than democratic, whatever else it might be.

There's a self-evident irony in delegating responsibility for proposing profound changes to our current system of elected representation -- a system that has flaws but which was born of trial and error over a centuries-long struggle -- to a selected group.

To be sure, those selected were randomly chosen from each provincial constituency -- that selection being carefully controlled, of course, to satisfy a prior requirement that they must represent various demographic segments of society. Gender, ethnicity, geography, urban or rural lifestyle, etc., all had to have their pre-ordained quotas met.

Nothing wrong with striving for an assembly that resembled the makeup of B.C. However, in my admittedly conservative view of democracy, a selection process that is structured to ensure outcomes may be many things -- efficient, accurate, consistent, comforting -- but it can't be described as democratic. By definition, democracy as I understand it requires us to accept some degree of uncertainty while agreeing to abide by the unexpected outcome.

Do I doubt the good faith of the assembly? Nope.

Question the personal sincerity or collective integrity of its members? Nope.

Begrudge them their opportunity to offer advice? Nope.

Challenge their commitment, intelligence or earnestness? Not a whit.

But that doesn't mean I feel that they can democratically represent me or my desires regarding any future reform to our electoral system. I had no say in their selection. I have no idea who any of them are save for a brief thumbnail perused on a website. Not one of the delegates is really accountable politically for the decisions ultimately taken.

I didn't vote them in and so I can't vote them out if I don't like what they're doing. Thus, the process functions more like a visit from the cuckoo than the participatory democracy it purports to be. The assembly will deposit its egg for us to hatch, then fly away, never to be seen again.

If I don't like the egg the assembly left, if I think it should have left some other egg, what's my alternative? None.

It's take-it-or-leave-it. Accept the reductionist vision of change or stick with the status quo.

Reductionism is an important issue here. The assembly was mustered to assess possible alternatives to the first-past-the-post system. Read what's on the assembly's website and the sub-text is an assumption that the present system is dysfunctional and needs replacing.

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. What is clear, however, is that the assembly then went through a process in which all the possibilities for changing the status quo were reduced to one alternative, the single transferable vote system.

So despite all the high-flown rhetoric about choices, what we're really talking about is a process for shrinking the range of possible choices to one -- deciding between the status quo or the one alternative that's being presented by the assembly.

Call me obtuse if you like, but when a selected group tells me that there is going to be only one take-it-or-leave-it alternative to something that was achieved at great cost and which nurtured everything that we have so far treasured about Canada, I don't find that particularly democratic.

Why are my options being narrowed -- is it because having more than one choice would be too intellectually overwhelming for me? That seems an elitist assumption.

I know how I'd feel if these kinds of rules were used to govern the next election to the legislature. Would anybody consider it legitimate if electoral challenges to the incumbent were restricted to one? Would anybody tolerate the idea that other candidates should be left off the ballot because they didn't meet with the prior approval of some body which wasn't accountable to anybody?

Okay, there's my quibble with the process. Now let's consider the one alternative being bruited about thus far -- some kind of single transferable vote.

For me, political democracy demands two things. First, clear and indisputable outcomes. Second, a voting process that is straightforward, transparent and instantly verifiable.

But with the single transferable vote, the assigning of the votes seems anything but straightforward. Instead, we're told, it will require a mathematical computation so complex that computers will have to be used to properly weight the distribution of the transferable votes.

I'm no Luddite. I use computers every day. Neither am I seduced by technology. My general principle is, the simpler the better unless proven otherwise.

So forgive my lack of enthusiasm for submitting my single transferable vote to a computer for distribution among other candidates according to some algorithm that's beyond my basic math skills.

Then there's the transparency problem. As I understand it, what's being proposed promises to disconnect me from my vote. If a computer is assigning the transferable ballots according to mathematical formulae, how do I know that my vote is actually going to the person to whom I want it to go, or that it's not being used to advance the fortunes of somebody whose platform I voted against?

I'm not a computer programmer -- how do I evaluate what's going on inside the machine? And how is an electronic transaction going to be made easily transparent to voters?

Will there be a paper trail that each of us can consult to ensure that our votes were properly assigned specifically as we wished them to be assigned?

Having had plenty of experience with news stories about computer weirdness in my time and observing the most recent controversy over computerized voting machines in the United States that didn't record votes properly, assigned votes to the wrong candidates and couldn't provide a verifiable record of what had gone on, my alarm bells are ringing already.

Defenders of the assembly's proposal will doubtless chastise me as a political dunce who should get with the agenda and trust the high tech. They may be right.

But I also believe that when we are considering major structural changes to an electoral system that has served us well for so long, any referendum on alternatives should be expansive, not reductionist, transparent rather than opaque.

So far, the opposite seems to be taking shape.

The following is a sidebar that accompanied the column

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT? HUME'S VIEWS:

When a selected group tells me that there is going to be only one take-it-or-leave-it alternative to something that was achieved at great cost and which nurtured everything that we have so far treasured about Canada, I don't find that particularly democratic.

Why are my options being narrowed -- is it because having more than one choice would be too intellectually overwhelming for me? That seems an elitist assumption.

With the single transferable vote, the assigning of the votes will require a mathematical computation so complex that computers will have to be used to properly weight the distribution of the transferable votes.

So how do I know that my vote is actually going to the person to whom I want it to go, or that it's not being used to advance the fortunes of somebody whose platform I voted against?

shume@islandnet.com

© Copyright 2004 The Vancouver Sun. Reproduced from the BC Citizens' Assembly website.