B.C. New Democrat and B.C. Greens finalize agreement - BC Green Caucus
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Full text agreement here.

Section 3 – Policy Initiatives & 2025 Deliverables

11. Democratic and Electoral Reform

The Parties will work together to create a special legislative all-party committee to evaluate and recommend policy and legislation measures to be pursued beginning in 2026 to increase democratic engagement & voter participation, address increasing political polarization, and improve the representativeness of government. The committee will review and consider preferred methods of proportional representation as part of its deliberations. The Government will work with the BCGC to establish the detailed terms of reference for this review, which are subject to the approval of both parties. The terms of reference will include the ability to receive expert and public input, provide for completion of the Special Committee’s work in Summer 2025, and public release of the Committee’s report within 45 days of completion. The committee will also review the administration of the 43rd provincial general election, including consideration of the Chief Electoral Officer’s report on the 43rd provincial general election, and make recommendations for future elections.

  • AlolanVulpixOPMEnglish
    2·
    13 hours ago
    1. PR can be demonstrated to be mathematically superior to winner-take-all such as FPTP. So this is the baseline.
    2. You are making the claim that FPTP is superior to PR. The onus is on you to demonstrate your claim.
    3. I am not saying one way or another whether there are more democratic systems than PR, because it’s not relevant to the discussion. I am not the one bringing up a controversial claim that is unsupported by the current evidence.
    4. Stop trying to move the goal posts by changing the objective, that you must demonstrate.
    5. You haven’t established the case that there are problems that are unique to PR, that you wouldn’t find in a (direct) democracy. This is a big problem with many of the points you are bringing up.
    • MyBrainHurtsEnglish
      13·
      13 hours ago

      So, are you running away from the two principles that you laid out above? I’m just pointing out here that you seem to move the goal posts to whatever is convenient. When you are defending PR, all that matters is how democratic something is. When I bring up direct democracy, all of a sudden, the costs and practical consequences matter.

      You cannot have it both ways.

      And are you confusing me with someone else? My very original point was

      Please, anything but full PR. Please. In a polarized landscape PR is leading to increasingly bad outcomes (Israel, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland etc.) In a PR system, the Far Right would be running France.

      • AlolanVulpixOPMEnglish
        3·
        13 hours ago

        So, are you running away from the two principles that you laid out above

        I suppose so…? At the end of the day, PR can be demonstrated to be mathematically superior to FPTP, and you have not provided arguments that also couldn’t be made against any ordinary democracy.

        I’m not scared to say that a direct democracy is more democratic than PR. But this is not new information, nor is it in contention. What is in contention is whether PR is democratically superior to FPTP.

        To say “anything but full PR” necessarily implies that you believe PR is worse than FPTP. Again, you have yet to demonstrate this claim. I’m waiting for you to get back on topic.

        • MyBrainHurtsEnglish
          13·
          12 hours ago

          So, are you running away from the two principles that you laid out above

          I suppose so…?

          Okay, then this:

          What is in contention is whether PR is democratically superior to FPTP.

          Doesn’t really make sense. You can’t just say “when we’re talking about PR vs FPTP, what matters is whether PR is more democratic” but then when Direct Democracy vs PR is the question, all of a sudden it doesn’t matter which is more democratic.

          So again, what are the principles by which you are judging PR to be a good or bad choice? If it is purely, which is the most democratic system, then direct democracy blows PR out of the water…

          If you want an answer to the question “which is better, PR or FPTP” you have to have criteria to use as judgement. And again, if that criteria is only “which is more democratic” then why aren’t you advocating direct democracy?

          • AlolanVulpixOPMEnglish
            1·
            7 hours ago

            Oh boy…

            what are the principles by which you are judging PR to be a good or bad choice? If it is purely, which is the most democratic system, then direct democracy blows PR out of the water…

            You want me to say that I am using more factors to judge an electoral system than measures of democracy alone? Yes, that’s true, but I’ve literally never pretended it was anything otherwise. Because I live in reality, where I know a direct democracy is impractical. But everyone knows that, and it adds no value to the conversation, because the true contention is of FPTP vs PR.

            And then you’re going to ask me how I know a direct democracy is impractical… And then I’ll say, how does this demonstrate which of FPTP or PR is better…

            if that criteria is only “which is more democratic” then why aren’t you advocating direct democracy?

            Because it’s not the only criteria. You thought you had me trapped in a corner, didn’t you?

            The feasibility of the electoral system was always a presupposition.

            You know what’s even better than a direct democracy? If we could clone everyone’s “spirit”, and have the spirit legislate on behalf of the person, while the person just lives their life (similar to Severance!). But that’s entirely impossible, so it’s not for consideration in the first place.

            So overall, you’re quite the skilled debater conversationalist. But you play dirty to get it to appear like you can win arguments.

            I’m going to re-insert a link to my prior comment, that is still unanswered.

            At the end of this whole conversation, you still haven’t gotten to demonstrating why FPTP is better than PR. Instead, you’ve wasted mine and everyone else’s time by going on wild tangents and playing games.

            It’s conversations like this that demonstrate to me just how out of touch the no-PR side is. Thanks to you, I now have almost sort of a renewed vigour to push for full PR.