STV x 3?

Out in B.C., the Ottawa Citizen reports, voters reelected Gordon Campbell's Liberals, possibly faute de mieux. But they decisively rejected a referendum to switch from first-past-the-post to a complex Single Transferrable Voting system. Again. This STV idea was supposedly the work of a random group of citizens who just happened, after extensive briefings, consultations and workshops to endorse a wonky proposal they never heard of before which by sheer coincidence was heavily favoured by the people doing the briefings and running the workshops. It has almost literally no support among the ordinary people who are meant to be the beneficiaries and practitioners of self-government. But it is hugely popular with that segment of the chattering classes that spends its time thinking about how the masses would conduct themselves politically if they were less vulgar.

My guess is STV will be on the ballot again and again in B.C. until it somehow passes in a moment of inattention. Then we'll be told the debate is over and it's time to move on. For instance to implementing it in Ontario and then nationwide.

OK, I have to end by quoting Cheserton: “The notion of self-government was not ... that the ordinary citizen is to be consulted as one consults an encyclopedia. He is not there to be asked a lot of fancy questions to see how he answers them. He and his fellows are to be, within reasonable human limits, masters of their own lives."