BC-STV: The ‘no’ side organizes
Posted in Politics on March 24th, 2005 by Sacha PeterI’ve been looking for more opposition to STV, and the leading site appears to be knowstv.ca, which was opened by many ex-political and union hacks and two out of the seven members of the Citizens’ Assembly that voted against STV (compared to 146 that agreed with it). Declan has a very good and lengthy response to their frequently asked questions. Note this is exactly the type of people I expected to oppose STV – people closely connected to the parties.
My favourite NDP hack, David Schreck, has an article on why you should vote no to STV. I won’t go through it all, but will look at the last sentence:
That means voters will be asked to take another leap of blind faith since they cannot see the legislation that would be implemented if the recommendation is adopted and that legislation could contain some big surprises.
Since when did politicans ever give the electorate an advanced copy of the legislation they plan on legislating in their election campaigns? I can’t think of a single instance. We all take a leap of blind faith that the people we elect actually do what they say they will before the election. In some cases they do, in some cases they don’t. It’s also our responsibility as voters to have enough of a memory to kick their asses out of office if they don’t follow up on the balance of their platform.
If parties were forced to draft and publish ALL their legislation before they start an election campaign, it would be an interesting way to govern if they couldn’t introduce any more legislation throughout the rest of their term. It’s not going to happen, unfortunately. Most people don’t know how to read legislation, although it’s really simple. Anybody working in BC should read the Employment Standards Act, for example. It’s a really easy read and defines what employers and employees are obliged to do.