September 5, 2006 Source: :
http://newsrelease.uwaterloo.ca/news.php?id=4766 Ontario voters gain opportunity to review electoral process WATERLOO, Ont. (Sept. 5, 2006) -- Voters in Ontario will have an opportunity to contribute to an innovative process aimed at reforming their electoral system, says a University of Waterloo political scientist. Bob Williams, a specialist in provincial politics, says the Ontario Citizens' Assembly will give the public a direct say in determining the options for voting and how votes are translated into seats for Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs). The 103-member assembly will identify what principles Ontarians value the most in their electoral system. The assembly, which begins its work Sept. 9 in Toronto, will hold public consultations on the election process. Based on what the assembly learns, it will recommend whether Ontario should keep its current electoral system or change to a new one. Assembly members will submit a report to the government by May 2007. If the assembly recommends making a change to Ontario's current electoral system, the government is required to put the question to voters in a province-wide referendum. "Ontario is about to embark on an innovative experiment in democracy," Williams said, noting that assembly members were chosen randomly from Ontario's Permanent Register of Electors. He said the assembly is innovative because a task of considerable political importance is assigned to amateurs. No elected officials were eligible to serve in the assembly and no previous knowledge or experience about electoral systems was required to participate. "The idea that ordinary citizens should be given a formal mandate to evaluate a key component of our political system and to recommend corrective action is unprecedented in Ontario," Williams said. "Taking the task of evaluating the electoral system out of the hands of those with the most at stake in it may bring a refreshing antidote to the disrespect normally associated with politics." Four other provinces have already initiated an examination of electoral reform. In Prince Edward Island and British Columbia, there have been elections within the last 20 years that produced a solid majority government facing a minuscule opposition (of one or two seats) or none at all, as happened in New Brunswick in 1987. In other cases, such as Quebec and British Columbia, the electoral system allowed a political party to win more seats than its main opponent, even though the losing party accumulated more votes across the province. "There is a growing sense in many parts of Canada that the existing electoral system is one of the contributing factors to a 'democratic malaise'," Williams said. In contrast, Ontario elections have not produced lop-sided results since the 1950s and only in 1985 did the party with the most votes end up with fewer seats than another party. "Ontario's invitation to consider thinking about electoral reform through the Ontario Citizens' Assembly is not being driven by a crisis or by an obvious failure of our electoral system," he said, adding that the province has the opportunity to evaluate the values and purposes of its electoral system in a calm and dispassionate atmosphere. For more information on the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, visit link Also a specialist in Canadian municipal government and politics, Williams is currently engaged in a long-term project to prepare a comprehensive database of the key elements of Canada's federal and provincial electoral history. It will provide a Web-based resource to support the research needs of students and observers of Canadian political life working in academic, media and partisan circles.
| 