Elections B.C. has announced that the referendum on electoral reform has failed. The vote was 61.3聽per cent against proportional representation and 38.7 in favour, with 1.43 million voters casting ballots.
That represents a turnout of 42.6 per cent.
In one respect, the result is a surprise. Both members of the governing alliance, the NDP and Greens, strongly favoured a yes vote and campaigned accordingly. During the 2017 provincial election, the two parties combined captured 57 per cent of the vote. It might have been supposed that showing would have been reflected in the referendum result. Instead, the opposite occurred.
It鈥檚 hard to say what was behind such a firm rejection. Certainly, the minister responsible, Attorney General David Eby, did the Yes side no favours by admitting before the vote that there were two dozen questions he could not answer about the new system.
In addition, there was a certain desperation in the way the referendum was structured. The government had said a bare yes vote of 50 per cent plus one would suffice. And no provision was made to protect the interests of less-populous regions.
But the most likely explanation is that proportional representation leads to endless minority or coalition governments. Supporters conceded that point, but argued that with coalitions comes consensus-finding.
That assurance doesn鈥檛 appear to have outweighed fears about the instability associated with such arrangements.
The question now is where this leaves each of our parties. The Greens had the most to lose from a no vote. Their three seats in the legislature come nowhere near matching the 17 per cent of the vote they gained in 2017.
Had proportional representation been in effect, they would have taken not three seats, but 15. This is a grievous and devastating loss for Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver.
Where does his party go from here? With so little of substance separating the Greens and NDP, his only hope now is another split vote at the next provincial election, allowing him to maintain his alliance with the NDP.
In one respect, Premier John Horgan comes out ahead. A change to proportional representation would certainly have allowed the Greens to cut into his party鈥檚 seat tally.
But with the decisive rejection of a policy he supported and campaigned for, Horgan must be concerned about just how secure his base is.
The clear winner, politically speaking, is B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson. Proportional representation might have doomed his party to permanent opposition status, as NDP/Green coalitions ruled indefinitely.
Nothing lasts forever, of course, but it鈥檚 hard to imagine a majority Liberal administration any time soon had the Yes side prevailed. There is also the reality that proportional representation would have benefited the provincial Conservatives, and most of those gains would have come at the cost of the Liberals.
In short, Wilkinson now has a shot at forming a government over the next election cycle or two, while with a yes vote, the odds against that would have been formidable.
We understand how disappointing this outcome must be to supporters of proportional representation who have worked hard for years to make their case.
That they failed was not due to any lack of effort or conviction.
After three unsuccessful referendums, proportional representation in B.C. is dead for the foreseeable future 鈥� unless governments elected under first-past-the-post continue to be deaf to the concerns that motivated many Yes supporters.
And there, perhaps, is an element of success concealed in this failure. For it is now up to proponents of first-past-the-post to show that governments elected on this basis can achieve consensus and speak for all British Columbians.
In a fractious province such as B.C., that is no small task. But the worst thing that could happen is if politicians who favour the traditional system lapse into complacency and fail to address the very real concerns this referendum revealed.
