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How to Vote in a Rigged Voting System And How We Can Create One That Isn’t Rigged.

Surrey is run under what is called “commission government,” a kind of government created during the First Gilded Age (1890-1930). According to its inventors, the idea of commission government was to reduce voter turnout, reduce citizen participation in politics, create unanimous city councils and place most power in the hands of unelected officials, accountable to a city manager.

“Why would anyone want those things? You might ask,” Stuart Parker, Proudly Surrey council candidate, who holds a PhD in US, Canadian and Mexican history explained, “back in the first Gilded Age, many social scientists have followed the lead of US historian Tom Sugrue in calling this the second, we saw the rise of populist authoritarian movements and increasing government corruption, just like today. Back then, people mistakenly thought that these things could be stopped by taking government away from the people and placing it in the hands of experts. While this ultimately failed, our municipal governments are relics of this failed strategy, vestiges of an elitist past. Our goal is to bring democracy back to our city.”

Proudly Surrey’s democratization platform involves three sets of measures: “First, we need to fix our voting system,” explained Parker, one of the founders of BC’s electoral reform movement who has served in leadership roles in fair voting groups since 1996. “The current Surrey government won 47% of the vote and yet won every school board seat, every council seat and the mayor’s chair. That’s because the voting system was designed to make sure most people didn’t have a single representative they voted for on council. We’re going to change that by bringing in the Cumulative Vote system, a kind of proportional representation used through the US in cities where the courts have struck down unrepresentative voting systems like ours.” In this system, voters still have eight Xs for council and six four school board but may place more than one next to an individual candidate.

“We also want to bring real power to the mayor’s office so the mayor ceases to be a simple figurehead but we don’t favour the kind of top-down approach that has been tried in Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere. Instead, we favour a parliamentary mayor system where city Councillors vote select a mayor from among their number. The person in the mayor’s chair is whoever commands majority support on council. In this way, our mayor will be the true leader of city council, not a bully trying to lord a title over people. When things get done through cooperation and compromise, that’s how representative government works. That’s how our legislature works; that’s how our parliament works; that’s even how our school board works,” Greaves explained.

“When we have city Councillors who represent the vast majority of Surrey residents, we can begin fixing our broken public consultation system. Public input, feedback and consultation only work when there are consequences for not listening. When city staff, no matter how well-intentioned, conduct public consultation, there are no consequences for them manipulating or overruling voters because their jobs are secure no matter what happens. They are hired or fired by a permanent city manager, not by elected politicians. And when politicians conduct public consultation under our current system, there are few consequences for them. They rise or fall by their slate; that won’t be the case with Cumulative Vote. A party’s voters will reward the Councillors who listen and be better able to punish those who don’t,” explained Adam MacGillivray, a strata council president who came up through local strata democracy to join the Proudly Surrey slate, “I know that if I make too many mistakes or don’t appear to be working for my fellow residents, I’m out on my ear next year.”

Proudly Surrey will not eliminate the City Manager position but will begin transferring staff from the indirect management through the Manager to direct manager through councilors’ offices. In this revised system, each Councillor would have additional managerial and administrative staffers who would directly administer a portion of the city’s civil service. “As we roll out this new system,” Greaves explained, “we will begin by transferring staff who are directly responsible for public consultation and planning to the direct management of Councillors. Of course, we realize this entails risks. Corruption remains a real danger.”

“And that is why we also need not just an iron-clad city conflict of interest policy but a full-time Conflict of Interest Commissioner, one who supervises both the parts of the government indirectly administered through the manger and directly administered through mayor and council,” Greaves concluded, explaining that “the 65-75% of Surrey residents who do not vote are not stupid, lazy, apathetic or any of the other names they are called. They are responding rationally to a rigged system. When we give them a better system, many will start showing up.”