For the last 4 months there has been a very interesting political experiment going on here in British Columbia. BC has long had a first past the post electoral system and that's a system rife with deficiencies.
In "first past the post" the candidate who gets the most votes in a riding gets to represent that riding. Now, if all you have are two parties running and no independents then one of those candidates will have more than 50% of the vote. Introduce any other variable like a third party or independent candidates (which is always the case in BC) and you have candidates winning the riding (and thus the sole seat for that riding in the legislature) with ridiculous figures like 34% of the vote.
The current provincial government is run by the BC Liberal Party (don't let the name fool you - they are anything but liberal). In 2001 they won 73 of 76 seats in the BC Legislature with only 57.5% of the popular vote. As you can see this method guarantees a large percentage of the population, in this case 42.5%, are really unrepresented as they represent the percentage that does not agree with the right wing policies of the current government. A critical flaw in the process.
So much for background. The one thing that I will give this Liberal government credit for is the process of electoral reform they've started. Granted they came under a lot of public pressure to do so after their win and that of the NDP government that preceded them and which was elected with something like 39% of the popular vote (although not as large a majority of seats). As result the Liberals formed the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.
Now, that could just be a fancy title for another panel of political hacks, friends of the party etc. No one could be condemned for being that cynical as that would be the normal process. However, in this instance that's not what happened, and here is where it truly gets interesting. The government randomly selected 15,800 names from the BC Voters List. Then those individuals were invited to attend a meeting in their are of the province if they were interested in taking part. At each meeting the nominees selected amongs themselves the people who would serve, ensuring that there was one man and one woman from each riding. For a full history of how the committee was formed go here.
This group represents a very wide spectrum of people in the province (there are about 3 million people in BC).
The group is made up of an equal number of men and women with a wide range of backgrounds – from nurses, teachers and ranchers to a man who walks dogs for a living. There are also students. Each person earns $150 per day they meet – which will generally be on weekends
The assembly spent the first few months learning the pros and cons of different methods of choosing representation. Now they are visiting the 40 largest communities in BC and holding public forums to drill down even further into the public's desires for representation. Later this year the assembly will decide on what the future political system will be in the province and the current government has pledged to abide by the assembly's decision.
At no known time in the history of the world has such an approach to democracy been taken. An approach that truly stands the best chance of delivering a system that represents what the people want and not what various special interest groups want. Very interesting indeed.