Deliberations

Image: The Globe & Mail, 11 Oct 2007 After a huge investment in time and intellectual energy, the terrific work of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly for Electoral Reform was simply ignored. Only 52.6% of eligible voters in Ontario cast votes in their provincial election yesterday, the lowest turnout on record. Of those, only 36.7%, that's one in five of the adult population, voted to change to the more representative MMP system from their current first-past-the-post system, so the referendum has failed miserably. In only 5 constituencies in the Toronto metro area did MMP get a majority vote. Especially outside metro Toronto, exit polls provided clear evidence that most people did not have a clue about the referendum, and didn't understand that there was a problem to solve. The $6.8M ad campaign of Elections Ontario went unnoticed. And they weren't going to get any help from the incumbent parties, who do better with FPP. Not only do referenda have to be pitched well just to get noticed, but otherwise they fail on fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Anywhere. The NO campaign just has to invent a bunch of furphies, get on the pig-headed, sensationalist, faux-intellectual talk-back radio and the lazy thinkers just buy it. If the ad campaign and the media, both national and local, had given informed credit to the Citizens' Assembly, perhaps more would have trusted their judgement. For journos at newspapers like The Globe & Mail, ostensibly national but always centrist and conservative, to now say that voters didn't know about the referendum just makes me sick. Maybe they should have spent more time doing some real analysis than just rewording government press releases. So three provinces in Canada have now failed in their laudable attempt to modernise their electoral systems (BC, PEI and now Ontario). I'm sure every organiser has learned by now that once an assembly makes a recommendation they should take at least 12 months, maybe even two years, to build a groundswell of support, with publicly-aired deliberative polls. Only then take it to referendum. Surely this will dampen the spirit for deliberative democracy, so those of us who believe in it will have to wipe our little noses and shuffle forward.