Did you know there’s a referendum coming up in BC?

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – There’s a referendum on electoral reform in B.C. that’s fast approaching. But it seems many people don’t know about it.

You’ll soon be asked to vote on whether to keep our current “first past the post” electoral system or move to some form of proportional representation.

NEWS 1130 hit the street and asked people whether they were aware of the referendum. Most of the answers were:

“No.”

“No clue at all.”

“I am not. What is it on?”

“I don’t know, really, what it is. I haven’t looked into it yet.”

“My impression is, from the polling that I’ve seen, that there’s a lot of undecided votes out there — which suggests that people have not focused on this very much yet,” said political scientist Max Cameron.

He figures people’s minds are on the local elections right now.

In the past, referenda were often held at the same time as municipal elections, but Cameron is glad that isn’t happening this time.

“Had we been voting in the referendum at the same as the local elections, the whole campaign around the referendum would have taken place simultaneously with the local elections. You’re vying for attention on the part of voters, and their attention is limited.”

But Mario Canseco with pollster Research Co. feels if people could vote for both at the same time, it could help with voter turnout. “[And] ensure that this is part of the conversation, as it relates to politics — when you’re already some democratic processes happening at the same time.”

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Canseco points to the other mail-in referenda we’ve had in recent years, noting we had more time to prepare for them.

“We talked about the HST referendum for months. We talked about the Metro Vancouver transportation plebicite for months, as well. This one is happening fairly quickly — and it’s in the middle of a municipal campaign. So, there’s definitely a lot of distractions for residents, who are more inclined to pay attention to politics related to municipal issues than they are to pay attention to electoral reform, at this stage.”

For his part, Cameron thinks if the campaigns were already in full swing, “anything you did right now would be washed away by the attention to the civic election.”

He expects the campaigns to ramp up right after the results of the municipal elections are in. He believes that will be the key moment for both sides to get their messages out.

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The ballots start going out on Oct. 22. You will have until the end of November to mail in your vote for free.

Cameron believes having a mail-in ballot could encourage people to vote because it’s more convenient to do so than physically going to the polls.

“I think we need to think of referenda as not just marking a ballot… We need to think about more carefully about the whole process. That means finance of campaigns and so forth. And I also think there’s a need to supplement the referendum process with other ways of engaging the public.”