TORONTO - Electoral reform might never be a hot topic at the dinner table, but a campaign designed to whet appetites for next month's referendum is taking its message to trendy online spaces like YouTube and Facebook to add some buzz to a topic that's yet to take off with most voters.
Still, critics have their doubts that a $6.8-million public education campaign by Elections Ontario will catch on with the province's eight million voters in time for the Oct. 10 vote.
"I'm not really sure if they're doing the right thing. They're doing something, although it seems to be slow off the ground, although the writ was just dropped,'' said Ryerson University professor Daniel Rubenson.
"Maybe it will pick up steam.''
The six-week-long campaign is designed to explain the differences between the traditional "first-past-the-post'' system and an equally esoteric, two-vote system that advocates say better represents the will of the people.
An Elections Ontario group devoted to electoral reform had nearly 500 members Monday on Facebook, with defenders of both systems trading messages. There's also an electoral reform message on the video sharing website YouTube and a viral marketing campaign underway.
Problem is, visitors to the Elections Ontario website or the Facebook group are likely already tuned in to the referendum question, Rubenson said.
"They might be preaching to the converted.''
While electoral reform was well off the public radar screen earlier this summer -- Elections Ontario polling earlier this month had just eight per cent of respondents knowing anything about it -- there are signs that's changing.
Traffic to the agency's website jumped 31 per cent over the Labour Day long weekend, said deputy chief electoral officer Loren Wells, although Elections Ontario won't know for a while whether that translates into increased public awareness.
"We're doing what we think is the best way to get the information out there,'' Wells said.
Both Germany and New Zealand have adopted the "mixed-member proportional'' system, under which voters are asked to make two choices on a single ballot -- one for a local representative and another for a political party.
Under the proposed system, the number of seats in the legislature would swell from 107 to 129. Ninety politicians would be elected in enlarged ridings across the province using the current system, while another 39 would be appointed from a public list of candidates according to the percentage of popular vote the parties received.
The mixed-member system means traditional fringe parties that get more than three per cent of the popular vote, but not enough in any one riding to elect a candidate, would have a better chance of having at least one seat in the legislature.
A group lobbying for the mixed-member proportional system says Elections Ontario doesn't go far enough in explaining the differences between the two systems on its website.
"It's a shame that the pros and cons for the different options available to voters . . . are not included in their education campaign,'' said Joe Murray of Fair Vote Canada.
"We think that a mere description of how the mechanics of the system work is not enough to inform voters about the considerations they need when they're making a decision.''
