1) Upcoming Fair Voting Convention

2) We're looking for riding campaign co-ordinaters

3) Electoral boundaries commission.

4) Federal NDP has put forward a member's bill on electoral reform

5) Ontario's Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform

6) The Ontario government chooses the same thresholds as BC!!

7) Scotland will be using STV for their local elections this week

8) Victoria, Australia uses STV for the first time

9) U.S. Elections show clear majorities for Electoral Reform

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1) Upcoming Fair Voting Convention

We are organizing a Fair Voting Convention for the fall (October or November) in Vancouver. This convention will kick off our Yes campaign. We will be sending out more information as we learn more.

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2) Interested in being a FVBC riding coordinator?

In preparation for the referendum in May 2009 we are building a network of volunteers around the province. At this time, we are looking for people interested in coordinating information and activities within each of our current ridings. If you are interested and/or would like more information please contact Bruce Hallsor at hallsor@creaseharman.com.

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3) Electoral Boundaries Commission

The Electoral Boundaries Commission (http://www.bc-ebc.ca) finished its first round of public hearings on November 30, 2006. They will continue to receive written submissions until the fall, 2007. Submissions are posted on their website. Consider sending them your own submission!

Fair Voting BC's submission is number 122. It discusses the considerations required for the development of the multi-member ridings for BC-STV.

It is online at: http://www.bc-ebc.ca/submissions/detail/122

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4) Federal NDP has put forward a member's bill on electoral reform

Catherine Bell MP for North Island is taking over the NDP electoral reform portfolio from Ed Broadbent. She has introduced a member's bill onto the Order Paper in the House of Commons, namely Motion M-262. It asks the House to create a special committee to follow up on the work done in the last Parliament, specifically the 43rd Report of the Standing committee on House and Procedural affairs which made recommendations on strengthening and modernizing the electoral system in Canada.

The text of Catherine's motion is available at: http://www.catherinebellmp.ca/page/140 (also, page down to a link to more information at the bottom).

The work of previous committee is online at: http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/committeepublication.aspx?com=8988&lang=1&so...

Government's response to this report was elicited by this committee and is at:

http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?COM=8988&Lang=1&So...

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5) Update on Ontario's Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform

Ontario's Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform has now finished their work. Their final report is due on May 15, 2007. They built MMP and STV models as possible alternates to the current SMP electoral system.

On April 1, 2007 they voted 75 to 25 for their MMP model. This model has 90 single member ridings (a reduction from the 107 for the October 2007 election) with 39 list seats taken from a closed provincial list. A party must get at least 3% of the party vote to get seats from the lists. Candidates can run both in ridings and be on the party list. If a party receives more riding seats than they earn via the party list there is no compensation to the other parties who don't get as many list seats as their proportion would suggest (that is, no extra seats are added to the legislature). A summary of this model is online at http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/GetFile.aspx?aliaspath=%2fen-CA%2f....

They received over 1000 submissions from the public. They are posted at http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/en-CA/Get-Involved/View-And-Search....

The Students' Assembly on Electoral Reform completed their preliminary work. Their interim report is posted at http://www.studentsassembly.ca/.

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6) The Ontario government chooses the same thresholds as BC!!

The Ontario government has chosen the same thresholds for the electoral reform referendum: 60% of the ridings or 64 out of 107 must pass it at 50% while the overall popular vote is to be a minimum of 60%.

There has been some opposition to these choices within the legislature so a committee was held and some public presentations were accepted. Fair Vote Ontario, along with others, presented the case that the threshold should be the usual 50% plus. But to no avail. Their presentations are online at http://www.fairvotecanada.org/fvo_slams_referendum_threshold.

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7) Scotland will be using STV for their local elections this week!

Check out a very educational web site at http://www.votescotland.com/stv/CCC_FirstPage.jsp.

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8) Victoria, Australia uses STV for the first time! Our news release went out on Nov 29, 2006:

Victoria Holds First STV Election

On the heels of recent votes by several US cities to adopt STV-type voting systems, the Australian state of Victoria has held its first STV election this past weekend. Victoria is the last of Australia's five bicameral state legislatures to adopt proportional representation to elect at least one of its houses. The method aopted there was very similar to the Single Transferable Voting system that the BC Citizens' Assembly recommended for BC and which won 58% support in the 2005 referendum.

"The state of Victoria is similar to BC in many ways," says Bruce Hallsor, president of Fair Voting BC. "Its population is approximately 5 million, with a heavy urban concentration in a single southern city (Melbourne), so the lessons from Victoria's first experience with STV may provide insight into how well STV will work for BC." He added

"The STV election went off without a hitch, and delivered the results that proponents expect" Hallsor reported. "The major parties all earned seats in rough proportion to their popular vote, while smaller parties have a chance to get representation in the upper house for the first time". "Importantly, representatives from the two major parties, Labour and Liberal, were elected in every region of the state - no area is without representation in both government and opposition." Hallsor concluded.

In contrast, the single-member (alternative voting) results in the lower house were highly distorted - the first place party won half again as many seats as they deserved based on their share of the popular vote and some smaller parties were shut out altogether. Furthermore, the single-member election produced significant regional divisions - the new government has little rural representation and the opposition has little urban representation.

"What's most striking about Victoria adopting STV is how little fuss there was. The Australian public accepts STV as a normal and reasonable way to elect their representatives," said Bruce Hallsor. "STV is a modern voting system for modern times that's being adopted throughout the English-speaking world. Next year, Scotland will join Ireland, Northern Ireland and Australia, as well as various cities in New Zealand and the US in using this fair and effective voting system that maintains a strong link between voter and representative in every region."

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9) Friday, November 10, 2006

News Release

U.S. Elections show clear majorities

for Electoral Reform

Victoria, BC - Final US local election results, released yesterday, show the clean sweep continues for STV in North America. Following BC's 58% vote to approve STV in 2005, four US jurisdictions approved a change to an STV or similar voting system this week.

Minneapolis voted 65% in favor of adopting STV for all their municipal elections, including their elected council, parks board, library board, and estimate and taxation board.

The city of Davis, California voted 55% in favour of using STV to elect its city council. This plebiscite comes two years after a Governance Task Force recommended that the city adopt STV and in the wake of several successful STV elections at the University of California - Davis.

Both Oakland California (67%) and Pierce County (Tacoma) Washington (53%) also passed measures to adopt Instant Runoff Voting measures, which is a form of STV applied to single-seat races.

In all these elections, a 50% threshold was required to make the change.

"Wherever voters are given a choice between STV and first-past-the-post, they choose STV because it provides better representation, and more voter choice." Said Bruce Hallsor, President of Fair Voting BC and co-chair of the Yes campaign in the 2005 referendum, in reaction to the US results. "Polls here in BC, and in the United States, consistently show that the more voters learn about STV, the more they like it. We are confident that in the next BC referendum, in 2009, we will easily exceed the 60% majority required by BC Law." Hallsor added. "We note, however, that the 60% threshold is unprecedented, and was not required in any of the US jurisdictions that considered this matter."

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Prepared by Wendy Bergerud, April 2007