BC-STV Campaign is picking up steam.

After running in two successful federal campaigns, I now get to focus all of my efforts on getting electoral reform in place in BC.

I have been brought on as an organizer for Fair Voting BC and am working with local groups around the province to organize in advance of a Referendum we are having next year. I took on a similar role during the last referendum, but this time around I am able to work around the clock on getting BC-STV through.

The momentum is picking up. We have campus groups forming at most of the major Universities. UVic, SFU, UBC, UFV and we're close to getting clubs going at the interior Universities. Our main facebook group already has 2000 users, and we have 100s of volunteers lined up to take on various tasks. A few weeks ago, we did a blitz alongside the municipal elections and we managed to get over 150 people out in 40 communities.

I know people are really fed up with the current system. There is frustration that every election, so many voters are tossed away under our current system and there is a general lack of competition in many areas.

Of course, this time around we will have a funded opposition. The government has committed to providing the Yes and the No side with $500,000 each in order to run the campaign.

The no side will likely run a similar campaign as they did last time. It will be a John McCain style, "BC-STV, not worth the risk." It will rely on fear of small parties holding the balance of the power and it will be focussed on confusing people by focussing on how votes are transfered under BC-STV. While the Droop quota (Votes/Seats+1) is a fairly simple way of determining the minimum number of votes to win, the opponents will claim that grade 8 fractions are too difficult to understand.

The No side last time composed of an organized group of about two dozen individuals, a few retired MLAS, a few political pundits, and a few contrarians who came out against BC-STV because they preferred another electoral system and decided that they would oppose BC-STV for the sake of making some sort of political point.

I presume their group won't be as small this time, as I think a lot of the vested interests stood on the sidelines before. The current political system works extremely well, provided you have enough money to make a large political donation to help a political party get elected. Rather than having to convince individual MLAS, large businesses and unions often can deal directly with the leadership of a party. We can be certain that after BC-STV nearly passed the high 60% barrier, that this time around the opposition won't just hope that change goes away.