VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A citizens’ election task force has produced a list of radical changes to Vancouver’s civic elections, some of which could be enacted before the 2018 vote.

Municipal election turnout across BC has been historically low. Vancouver’s last election saw a sizable jump in turnout compared to 2011, but it was still well under 50 per cent.

In an effort to push turnout past 60 per cent by 2025, the task force’s first recommendation is that council move towards a system of proportional representation.

A Citizens’ Assembly would be formed to decide what kind of proportional representation the city would have, and an extensive public education campaign would help voters understand how it works.

This change would require permission from the provincial government to proceed, as would many others in the final report, such as pre-registering all 16-year-olds to vote, collecting emails and cell phone numbers in order to send out voting information, and a pilot program for online voting.

#VanCityCouncil now considering changes to civic elections, with the goal of getting turnout to 60% by 2025 #yvr — Kurtis Doering (@KDnewsguy) January 24, 2017

“We do know that online voting has been successfully implemented in a number of municipalities across Canada… and a survey conducted in 2016 found that online voting through a secure website was the top election reform wanted by Canadians,” says task force chair Shoni Field.

Council would also need the province to sign off on extending the vote to non-citizens with permanent resident status.

“We are looking at the intrinsic equality of all members of our community, and recognizing that permanent residents in Vancouver are active members of the city,” Field explains.

Requiring provincial support means that many of the proposed measures likely wouldn’t be in place by 2018.

Independent Election Task Force chair Shoni Field says #VanCityCouncil should consider PR voting, though the province would have to agree pic.twitter.com/MHZuLTACWw — Kurtis Doering (@KDnewsguy) January 24, 2017

However, the final report concludes with a list of “quick wins”, which could be enacted with relatively little time and effort.

Those include building on the efforts to increase voter turnout for the past election, making anonymous balloting data available in an open data format, and adding a provision to the city’s code of conduct requiring elected officials to withdraw from the decision-making process if the matter involves a corporate or union campaign donor.

The full report by the Independent Election Task Force can be read here.