PAST PUBLIC MEETINGS

Let The Campaign Begin!
Public Meeting Tuesday, March 22 2005

Meeting notes will be published soon.

NDP-Green Voter Cooperation
Public Meeting February 22, 2005

Participants helped us determine where to put our energy.

1. Vote Pairing
   • How does vote pairing work?
   • Constituencies where the combined progressive vote (Greens and NDP) could outnumber the Liberal vote (based on a recent poll) will be designated either Green or NDP for vote pairing.
   • Example: Green supporter “Chris” lives in the NDP-designated constituency. NDP supporter “Kim” lives in the Green-designated constituency.They are both concerned about splitting the progressive vote and have signed up for vote pairing on the Broad Coalition website. Chris will vote for the NDP in his constituency, while Kim will add to the Green vote inher constituency.
2. Other Points
   • With vote-pairing, you can vote your conscience and not waste your vote. Until we have proportional representation, vote pairing is our best bet to get more progressives elected.
   • Vote pairing is legal. It is up to each voter to decide what they do with their vote.
   • We will poll in the constituencies of the leaders of the NDP (Victoria-Beacon Hill) and the Green Party (Powell River-Sunshine Coast) first.
3. Website
   • We will work on the vote pairing website for next meeting
   • The website will connect potential pairs and keep a tally of pairs formed
4. Polling
   • Polling is essential to determine where vote splitting is likely to get a Liberal elected.
   • Since the costs of an official poll are prohibitive, we have decided to conduct our own poll with the help of a statistics support team.
   • Polling questions will be drafted by the next public meeting.
   • We expect to be polling between the middle and the end of March.
5. Volunteers
   Thanks to the participants who signed up to volunteer for three tasks:
   • Telephone or On-the-Street Polling
   • Website maintenance
   • PR (campaign to spread the word about vote pairing).

NDP-Green Alert: Cooperate or Split the Vote?
Public Meeting February 8, 2005

Over 50 people contributed to the brainstorm and focus groups on a 90-day strategy and action plan. The following draft is a summary.

Draft STRATEGY AND ACTION PLAN:

1. Cooperation
   • forget about cooperation within/between the parties and about candidates stepping down at this time;
   • focus on key constituencies where vote splitting was a problem in 2001;
   • Broad Coalition to take leadership role in polling and vote-pairing.
2. Polling
   • current polling is crucial
   • the Broad Coalition would give Ipsos the polling question; the polling questions would be the same as in the Broad Coalition's survey to build on that research;
   • Ipsos would make survey results available to the media;
   • a statistics expert has offered to help the Broad Coalition;
   • we can access and use existing B.C.-wide polls by contacting the media directly (since the data for many polls are not necessarily published);
   • we can also access Ipsos.ca directly.
3. Vote Pairing
   • identify winnable seats (NDP plus Green votes greater than Liberal) by a pre-election poll in those constituencies;
   • if the NDP has a large lead over the GP in a particular constituency, but a NDP/GP split could still give the Liberal candidate the win, GP members in that area could vote NDP in exchange for an NDP voter in another constituency giving their vote to the GP candidate that has a chance of winning there;
   • GP-voters and NDP-voters in identified constituencies are paired with each other through a website;
   • for historical data, summarize 2001 results focusing on the 12 constituencies where GP came second (after the Liberals) and 9 constituencies where vote splitting resulted in a Liberal win;
   • recommended web sites: votepair.org, Nadertrader.org.;
   • send information on vote pairing to NDP and GP leaders.
4. Spreading the Word about the Broad Coalition
   • reach out to people through their organizations, e.g. unions, churches, choirs etc.;
   • spread the word through grassroots contact e-lists, newsletters, phone lists, handouts and public meetings;
   • grassroots can pass their concerns on to constituency associations.
5. New Information
   Since the meeting, the webmaster of pairvote.org has been contacted about setting up a vote pairing website.
   We also talked to Ipsos about polling. Here is the information.
   • Paid polls - you can specify the question and the constituency. They will poll 200 in each constituency (200 is the smallest sample size). A custom design question for six target constituencies would cost $18,000 and for four constituencies would cost $12,000 (estimates).
   • Mustell Group may be cheaper.
   • Routine monthly omnibus polls - buy one question for $800 - they sample 800 from random digit dialling across BC.
   • Questions, answers and interpretations of omnibus polls are posted on their website ipsos.ca (they are just doing one on the Citizens Assembly and STV)

Press Release - February 1, 2005 announcing this meeting.

Definitely Not Politics as Usual - Public Workshop March 29, 2003

On March 29, about 45 people gathered for a workshop to develop action plans. Four working groups focused on different areas of interest. All the groups identified strong partisanship as an obstacle to cooperation. It was felt that a progressive movement needs to include genuine grassroots, not only the Greens and NDP.

Mainstream media was identified as a major obstacle. We need to network with all independent media and use mainstream media by writing op eds and letters. The use of a website, as well as distributing materials at rallies and other public events was suggested by most groups. See the March 29, 2003 Summary (pdf 9kb).

Getting It Together: Building A Progressive Coalition - Public Meeting January 29 2003

After spending most of a year developing our Discussion Paper (pdf 353kb), the Broad Coalition organized a public meeting to bring progressives together and get feedback on our discussion paper.

On January 29, more than 125 people attended the first public meeting of the Broad Coalition to listen and share ideas. We recorded a list of shared values that form the basis of our common ground. Read the January 29 summary (pdf 12kb).

After the January 29 meeting, there was a need to take the work we had done and formulate some action plans. We organized an all-day workshop.