[fvc-wat-disc] [fvc-wat-announce] Results from the BCreferendum on electoral reform

[Dave Arthur]

This is hugely disappointing for all of us and yes, we need to review.
I agree with Anita’s thoughts and I’m not sure we could have done much more or differently.
Look at some of the polling afterwards.
Young people voted 2 to 1 for PR.
Old people voted overwhelmingly against.
Greater Victoria and much of Vancouver voted for PR.
The rest of BC voted against.
Does anyone see the parallel with voters across Canada, especially in Ontario, who always vote Conservative?
Only 42% of ballots were mailed in and Canada has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the world.
Complacency and ignorance of the voters played a big part in this.
Add to that the negative misinformation put forward and paid for by big money that many BC folk ate up.
I watched some of the TV debate and the Liberal leader is a pugnacious jerk.
No more minority or coalitions or fringe parties getting power despite the fact that minority governments have a good record in Canada e.g. universal healthcare.
But partisan fighting and political racism is fine.
Am I too cynical to say there is a reason Canada is one of the few countries in the world that has not adopted PR?
Should we give up? No, but we need to find ways to combat the complacency and ignorance.
Can we trust political parties who have gone from losers to false majority winners? Obviously NOT!!
Is Justin listening??
Dave A

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Anita Nickerson
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2018 12:07 AM
To: FVC Waterloo Region Discussion
Subject: Re: [fvc-wat-disc] [fvc-wat-announce] Results from the BCreferendum on electoral reform

Thanks for asking, Matthew. 

Yes, we'll do a review. There's nothing to hide. 

There are 25 active chapters who formed a wonderful community of leaders and volunteers knocking themselves out to win this referendum so we're all intimately familiar with what went on day to day for over a year. We made decisions together. 

We were the only organization with any ground game and we squeezed every last volunteer and dollar off that list.

My personal take:

As someone who lived and breathed this for the past 18 months, in terms of things we could have foreseen and done differently, there wasn't much. 

I'm not trying to escape accountability - this was a horrible and discouraging failure and if there were mistakes we as FVC-BC made that I could point to and say "this was a big mistake that helped cost us the referendum", I really would. I'd own it.

But as I look at what we did as FVC-BC, all I can see is how we might have spent a few thousand dollars a bit differently and more efficiently out of the large sum that was spend on the campaign, and it wouldn't have made much difference to the outcome.

Please remember that while are the group with people who care the most about this - people who will start in the summer of 2017, people who will volunteer 40 hours a week for months and can count things like 40 presentations given in one small town, 40 banner waves, thousands of doors knocked on, every event attended, local media, 250,000 flyers (no other group even had flyers) in many places etc etc etc - we were the SMALL group here. With mailing list and potential to raise money about 1/20th some of the larger groups who were advertising sponsors. They made their own decisions if they spent peanuts.

And please remember we were not the official proponent group.

The proponent group, Vote PR BC, got $500,000 from the government and could raise an additional $200,000. 

We raised more money than they did it turned out - because people believed in what we were doing and could see we were knocking ourselves out as a citizens org trying to fill in real gaping holes. But we didn't have the people, the budget or the connections to nearly fill them all. We did what we could.

And we were not the NDP. 

Who ran a campaign that basically amounted to John Horgan saying he liked PR and making a cute video of himself with sunglasses. 

It was a campaign that effectively said "We don't really care if we win this." 

Since this campaign was divided completely along partisan lines - with the (right wing Con) BC Liberals stating at the outset that they were fighting for their very survival and would do whatever it took to kill PR - which amounted to their party making it #1 priority and spending every penny lying to people non-stop for over a year - there needed to be a HUGE effort by the BC NDP to pull almost every person who voted for them (the 40%) to vote for it. A ground game organized six months ahead. TV commercials etc etc. They chose not to do that. 

In some ridings that voted for the NDP about 20 something percent voted for PR. While the Liberal MLAs held town halls across the province against PR and got local ethnic leaders on board to mobilize their communities, and sent emails to their local lists, NDP MLAs sat back.

This is really a horrible and devastating loss for many of us. What was the hardest thing by far was FIVE POLLS in a row showing it was 50/50 and then on voting day getting 38%. Many of us were in shock. 

I had allowed myself to be deluded that all the things I KNEW were necessary to win a referendum like this and weren't in place...well, I thought there was hope we could win it anyway. Those polls gave me hope. It sure wasn't for lack of passion, intelligence and hard work from all our leaders.

>From a FVC perspective I can account for every dollar and every activity - we're all one team - and I honestly don't think there was much else we could have done. We can write pages of stuff if it makes us look more "accountable" - one group of talented volunteer leaders to another - but I don't think anything we could have done differently as FVC-BC would have shifted the vote more than 1%.

Anita

On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 11:24 PM Matthew Piggott <piggott.matthew at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Sharon et al.,

I share that disappointment.

My honest, but also somewhat disruptive question is: what went wrong? More importantly, is FVC and FVBC doing a thorough campaign review? What were the gaps? Were we outspent? Not have enough volunteers? I think members deserve to know this info (even at a higher level). There are so many questions we could ask.

The reason I also ask is that mature/maturing organizations should always have the structures in place to do at least a basic review. Certainly, organizations I want to be part of, volunteer for, donate money to :) I'm personally reminded of how the GPC did a review of the 2015 federal campaign when we fell so short of our goals. 

Any case I hope the questions are asked and that FVC members will be get to know and hear more.

Matthew Piggott


Sent from my BlackBerry — the most secure mobile device — via the Rogers Network
From: sharonsommerville at gmail.com
Sent: December 20, 2018 7:48 PM
To: fvc-wat-announce at listserv.thinkers.org
Reply to: fvc-wat-disc at listserv.thinkers.org
Subject: [fvc-wat-announce] Results from the BC referendum on electoral reform
Hello FairVoting Friends,

The results from BC's referendum were announced this afternoon.  Sadly, the outcome is not what we were hoping for; below is a link to a CBC report on the results.  Changing our electoral system is long & vital process.  FVC will continue to work toward instituting a more fair and equitable electoral system which ensures that every vote cast influences the election results.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/electoral-reform-referendum-results-1.4954538

Wishing you all the very best of the season,

Sharon Sommerville
for FVC-WR


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