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What about regional arguments? Does 50 per cent plus one allow Vancouver area voters to dominate everyone else? Here, too, the evidence says no. It’s all there in the longstanding voting patterns across the province. The regions do not vote as a political bloc. Rural B.C. is split, half voting B.C. Liberal, half voting NDP/Green. Urban B.C. is slightly more left, but the Liberals still won more than a dozen seats in the Lower Mainland. It seems highly unlikely that all urban (or rural) Liberal and NDP/Green supporters are going to suddenly agree to vote as a bloc on voting system reform because they live near each other.

What these journalists seem to forget is that the B.C. Liberal government’s decision to impose a super-majority rule on the 2005 and 2009 voting system referenda was not motivated by principle but political self-interest, with Premier Gordon Campbell bowing to pressure from his rural backbenchers who feared a more proportional voting system would see many of them lose their seats.

What about the ballot structure? Is it fair to suggest it is rigged in favour of change? Again, no. If British Columbians really want to keep the current first-past-the-post voting system, all they have to do is get a majority to vote that way in the referendum. The two-part question allows voters maximum influence on the basic choice (to keep what they have or change) and the nuances of what change might be (the three different models of PR). The three models of PR specifically address the key concerns that critics have raised repeatedly over the past decade and half of the reform period. Issues like the size of rural ridings, concerns about just who selects the specific candidates who get into office, and the degree of proportionality to be achieved. Of course, we don’t really know how important any of these issues really are to voters, so letting them rank the system options is the most transparent way to find out. The ballot structure is similar to the one used in New Zealand in 1992, and no one has argued it was biased in favour of change. If anything, at the time, reformers feared it was biased in favour of first-past-the-post!