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Many Vancouverites agree that the at-large voting system for choosing councillors is fundamentally undemocratic.

Electing politicians on a citywide basis, rather than in neighbourhood constituencies, means that anyone without a party machine has virtually no chance of winning.

We saw that in 2018 when several capable independent candidates fell far short of making it onto council.

The at-large system requires parties to raise a great deal of money to get their message out.

Certain politicians benefit under this system.

They include those with higher name recognition, including incumbents.

Other beneficiaries are those with access to more money, those whose names appear near the top of a lengthy ballot, and those with anglicized surnames.

It's no coincidence that Vancouver currently has elected politicians of Indian, Chinese, Indigenous, and Philippine ancestry at the provincial and federal levels, whereas there is nobody from any of these communities on council.

In federal and provincial races, concentrated racialized minorities have a better chance.

Would Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan have been elected to council in an at-large election before running for Parliament in 2015?

Not likely, if you look at the sad track record of other council candidates with South Asian surnames.

But he was twice elected in the federal riding of Vancouver South, where there are concentrated minority populations.

Would Jody Wilson-Raybould have been elected to council as an independent? Possibly not.

If Martin Luther King Jr. were living in Vancouver, would he remain silent about the city's voting system? Dick DeMarsico/New York World-Telegram

Monochromatic council fails to act

Nowadays in this thriving multicultural city of Vancouver, we have a nearly all-white council.

Despite plenty of hand-wringing after the 2018 election, there's no sign that any elected politicians are planning to shred the system in time for the next election.

If you're an incumbent who benefits from higher name recognition, why would you want to change that situation?

So we can assume that the structural racism will continue, just as it continued after the 2014 election when competent candidates of colour with nonanglicized surnames were mostly slaughtered at the polls.

Nowadays, few of them even put their names forward.

Many large cities outside of B.C. have a ward system, in which councillors are elected in constituencies rather than on a citywide basis.

This gives concentrated racial minorities a better chance of having a member on council.

The U.S. Supreme Court reflected this sentiment in the 1982 ruling Rogers v. Lodge. The judges concluded that the at-large system in a large county with a large black population violated the Equal Protection Clause within the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution.

The court decided that the at-large system of multi-member districts was racist.

As the Vancouver mayoral election was heating up last year, Stewart declared his hardcore opposition to the at-large system.

So why isn't a ward system implemented to replace the large multi-member district known as Vancouver?

It's because that's not good enough for the mostly white electoral-reform purists.

They want proportional representation, even though they can't always agree on which type of proportional representation. And they readily agree that many though not all forms of PR are currently illegal under the Vancouver Charter.

Majoritarianism, in which one group is entitled to primacy in society, still rules in Vancouver.

So even though the ward system is fairer than the at-large system and even though Vancouver supposedly has a progressive majority on council, nothing will likely change before the next election.

Council has another option: switch to the ward system for one election in 2022—thereby lessening the chance of structural racism.

Then council could let the different viewpoints get dealt with after that.

These Vancouver ward boundaries were proposed in 2004 when council allowed a nonbinding plebiscite with no spending limits.

Parties accept status quo

There's nothing stopping the introduction of proportional representation in 2026 after one election with a ward system.

That would provide time to hold a citizens' assembly and get provincial legislation changed to allow for a variety of PR systems.

But dumping the at-large system, of course, would require political will.

So far, there's no evidence that this exists on this council.

In the last election, OneCity proposed a citizens' assembly for choosing the best election system for the city.

COPE suggested electing some candidates in wards, which could be implemented without a referendum.

I believe that OneCity's only councillor, Christine Boyle, and COPE's only councillor, Jean Swanson, want to stamp out racial discrimination.

I believe that they're as appalled as I am about systemic discrimination embedded in Vancouver's voting system.

In their hearts, they must know it's wrong.

They're both intelligent, sensitive, and empathetic politicians. They both know how structural racism and socioeconomic discrimination have marginalized concentrated minorities in a multitude of ways.

One of them could easily bring forward a motion calling for a ward system for one election only in 2022.

The other one could second it and get it into the chamber to be debated.

Dare the rest of them to vote it down and answer to voters, including those from communities who've been shut of power, in the next election.

Christine Boyle and Jean Swanson (photo by Yolande Cole) could bring forward a motion to get the conversation started.

Motions on historic discrimination are easy

Of course, there would be the usual howling from the proportional-representation crowd who are always there to decry the evils of the first-past-the-post system.

Big-moneyed interests would also oppose this idea because they've always preferred the discriminatory at-large system.

But by opening up a public debate, council could hear speakers from marginalized communities at a committee meeting.

These speakers might talk about their reluctance to even run for office under the at-large system.

It's possible that former candidates of colour might come forward to speak about the sacrifices they made to run for office, only to discover that Vancouverites weren't prepared to elect them because of their non-anglicized surname.

It could be a watershed moment in shedding light on structural racism as it exists in Vancouver in 2019—and not just 50 or 100 years ago.

It's easy to pass motions condemning the expulsion of the Komagata Maru in 1914 from Vancouver's harbour or the denial of the vote to Chinese Canadians until 1947.

It's much more challenging to tackle racism today when entrenched interests don't want to cede any power.

That's what real political courage looks like.

Forget about Mayor Kennedy Stewart.

He's likely never going to do anything about the at-large system in his first term, notwithstanding his pre-election promise to address it.

He's too busy investing his political capital in a SkyTrain extension to UBC and more rental housing in single-family areas and along arterial routes.

Besides, he barely won the last mayoral election and he's going to want another win under his belt before taking on something as contentious as the at-large system.

It's going to be up to the true progressives on council to address structural racism—and that's Boyle and Swanson.

And if they don't do it, Vancouverites will have to get serious in 2022 about electing politicians who will make the elimination of the racist at-large voting system a very high priority.

I'll close this column with the words of Niki Sharma, a former park commissioner who wrote a commentary on this website after candidates of colour were defeated in the 2018 council election as whites on their slates were elected:

The weight of these barriers is not ours nor our communities to bear alone. It should rest on the shoulders of every Vancouver citizen. This is about who we are as a city and who we want to be. If we believe in equal opportunity—that every person should have a fair shot at those seats on council. And, that our democracy should create a platform for people to be judged by their values, ideas, and commitment and not by the colour of their skin. If we believe all this, then we need to take concrete action.