Designing a Referendum Question for British Columbia /

The Liberals argued at the time that the result was because of the electoral system and that in the future they would investigate changing the rules to prevent a similar outcome. [...] While some have attributed the results of both referenda to “widespread public ignorance of both the referendum and the substance of the issue at stake” (Pilon, 2010: 85), fraserinstitute.org Designing a Referendum Question for British Columbia / 11 others claim that the change in outcome had more to do with the fact that there were serious flaws in the very structure of the single transferrable v [...] The crucial difference between the two referenda was that in the first, the public did not know that the electoral boundaries would change if the province went to the BC-STV. [...] The government argued that if the majority supported electoral reform, a second binding referendum would be held in 1993 and the electorate would be asked to choose between FPTP and the alternative that received the most support in the plebiscite. [...] On November 6th, 1993, the exact wording of the options on the ballot was “I vote for the present First-Past-The-Post system as provided in the Electoral Act 1956” and “I vote for the proposed Mixed Member Proportional system as provided in the Electoral Act 1993.” Despite the increase in support for the current FPTP system, the referendum results were clear: 54 percent voted for MMP (table 5).