Electoral reform is on the march. Burlington, Vermont, the state’s biggest city, recently adopted instant runoff voting for its 2006 mayoral elections. On May 18th, Portland, Oregon became the first city in the country to approve full public financing of elections. And last week in Canada, a majority of voters opted for proportional voting in an important symbolic victory that could eventually lead to more voices and more choices in future elections.
In a referendum coinciding with British Columbia’s parliamentary elections, 57.4 percent of a record turnout of 1.6 million chose to replace Canada’s US-style, winner-take-all voting system with a method of proportional voting known as the “single transferable vote” (STV). Under this plan, voters rank multiple candidates in order of preference, empowering minorities and breaking up the monopoly of entrenched political parties. “This was not generally a vote of ideology,” says Rob Richie of the Center for Voting and Democracy. “This was a vote for a better, fairer democracy that people in all parties could rally around.”
Although the STV drive fell short of the 60 percent needed for passage, the measure won a majority of votes in 97 percent of the province’s districts. In the wake of these results, Premier Gordon Campbell immediately declared that reforming the electoral system should be a top priority for the newly elected Parliament. “The citizens have been very clear,” said Campbell. “There’s a pretty strong mandate for electoral reform to take place…a hunger to see improvement.”
The STV system is one of many ways we could make the US electoral process fairer. If you’re concerned about the state of our electoral system, check out the Center for Voting and Democracy to see how you can help defeat the moneyed duopoly impeding our democracy.
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Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen, a freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker and blogger (www.boldprint.net) living in Brooklyn.
