A remarkable event took place last week in British Columbia, which very few people this side of the border are aware of. BC voters went to the polls not only to elect their provincial government, but also to decide how they would elect their government in the future. More than 57 percent voted to abandon their current system of electing their representatives in winner-take-all, single-member districts (like what we have here in Washington state) in favor of electing representatives in multi-member districts according to the proportions of votes received.

The political significance of such a shift would be enormous. Winner-take-all systems tend to produce two dominant parties, as any new party running either to the right or left of the dominant parties is branded a "spoiler." We've seen this with Ralph Nader and the Green Party in this country. Winner-take-all systems force many voters to pick a "lesser evil" rather than vote for a candidate who truly represents their views. A system of proportional representation (PR) breaks up the two-party duopoly to enable a wider variety of political views to be represented in government and expressed in political debate.

Moving to a PR system would be one of the most profound systemic improvements to democracy in the United States, finally breaking the two-party stranglehold that we've seen become dominated by big money and corporate interests. Yet surprisingly few on the left have taken up the effort to reform our voting system, instead dividing into camps each election to argue about the merits of supporting a "lesser evil." Divided--and ruled. Maybe we can learn something from our neighbors to the north.

Unfortunately, the electoral revolution that would make British Columbia the largest jurisdiction in North America to adopt PR hasn't quite succeeded--yet. Even though the shift to PR had strong support in BC, it failed to meet the 60 percent super-majority threshold that was required to pass. Actually, two thresholds were required: 60 percent of the province-wide vote, and a simple majority within at least 60 percent of the districts in the province. The latter threshold was surpassed easily--the majority of voters in 77 of BC's 79 voting districts favored the change.

I spoke with Adriane Carr, longtime leader of BC's Green Party. Greens have perhaps the most to gain from the adoption of PR, as Green voters account for a significant slice of the population (just over 9 percent province-wide this year, and up to 27 percent in some districts) but never see that translate into representation in government under the current winner-take-all system.

Carr expects that despite failing to meet the 60 percent threshold, the strong support for electoral reform across the province will be something the government cannot ignore. She believes that some form of PR is bound to be implemented in BC sometime soon, but it's just a matter of agreeing on the particulars.

Indeed, the devil is in the details. Various methods of implementing the concept of proportional representation exist, but only one of these methods was offered to the voters. Several prominent voices in the referendum debate agreed with the general concept of PR, but urged a "No" vote because they favored a different method for implementing PR. Carr believes support for a shift to PR easily surpassed 60 percent, but that the shortfall occurred due to these disagreements over the exact method. Carr personally favors a method different from the one presented to voters.

The PR method offered to voters last week is called "Single Transferable Vote." It was recommended by a citizen assembly randomly selected from BC citizens that studied a variety of voting systems before making its recommendation. The STV system proposed for BC would have replaced single-member districts with districts of between two and seven representatives. Voters would rank their preferences (first choice, second choice, etc.) among all the candidates running and the winners would be chosen proportionally.

STV contrasts with a "party list" method in which voters would vote for a party instead of individual candidates. A party winning, say, 20 percent of the vote would receive 20 percent of the seats in the legislature, but the actual candidates seated would be determined by the party.

A third method, favored by Carr and being considered in other provinces of Canada, is called "Mixed-Member Proportional" and would elect some legislators by single-member districts and some by party percentage.

(To learn more about different PR systems, see http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/electoral/reform/reform-options.html. To learn more about the BC citizen assembly and its recommendations, see http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/electoral/reform/reform-options.html.)

The citizens of BC have taken a significant step toward electoral reform. It's worth watching to see what the next steps will be. More importantly, it's worth learning from their experience in order to find ways to fix our own system of "democracy" that has simply been sold to the highest bidder.