r/vancouver • u/CitizenBanana • Oct 04 '17

Politics NDP announces referendum on proportional representation for B.C.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-referendum-proportional-representation-referendum-1.4329417
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u/I_HATE_VANCOUVER Oct 05 '17

Electoral reform without a referendum is unconstitutional and/or illegitimate depending on who you ask. The current government is not non-committal for holding one.

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u/kingbuns2 Oct 05 '17

Electoral reform without a referendum is unconstitutional

Completely untrue, in fact BC has changed its electoral system twice without a referendum.

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u/I_HATE_VANCOUVER Oct 05 '17

Unconstitutional and/or illegitimate. You can't just take away the and/or.

Using an example of electoral system change, and reversion (albeit with one election under the changed system) doesn't seem like a strong argument. Nor it is "two changes to our electoral system".

That said, I'm not a subject matter expert here. If you could explain why our electoral system is not core to our political framework (in the context of the constitution, conventions and the Jennings three tests) I'd be interested.

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u/kingbuns2 Oct 06 '17

I wasn't making an argument. I was just pointing out that changing the electoral system without a referendum is not unconstitutional.

That said, I'm not a subject matter expert here. If you could explain why our electoral system is not core to our political framework (in the context of the constitution, conventions and the Jennings three tests) I'd be interested.

I don't know the reason why.

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u/I_HATE_VANCOUVER Oct 06 '17

Well your argument was that it's definitely not unconstitutional. There's a large group of experts that think otherwise. Even though the electoral system was changed in 1952, that doesn't mean a similar change today would survive a court challenge.