To: 136 reporters and commentators; plus 160 folks who are generally interested in good governance including members of the Social Mavrik Federation .

From: Bob Bray, President, Social Mavrik Federation

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This copy of my 9th message about the One Day Voting Initiative Petition

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CAMPBELL RIVER: Bob Bray presents a discussion about how the concepts of centralism and localism can be used to better differentiate political world views than the terms left wing and right wing, and how our voting opportunities are progressing towards centralism.

Communism has given central planning a well-deserved bad reputation. The Five Year Plan. The Politburo.

But central planning can be successful in specific situations. For example, the military. And in emergencies as we have recently seen, at the beginning anyway, public health controls for the pandemic.

Some free enterprise corporations use central planning for their manufacturing activities and delegate their sales activities to independent, locally owned companies. Such centrally planned manufacturing activities are an example of centralism and a very successful application of it.

In much less successful applications, centralism has been used to organize aspects of service delivery in fields such as health care, education and municipal government.

Consider municipal government in urban areas. It appears at first glance that it is cheaper to have one large municipal government (the metro) rather than a dozen small ones. A 1996 report refutes that and I quote, "The report of the task force on the Greater Toronto Area is significant because it specifically rejects claims that lower-tier amalgamations will save money and because it points to the benefits of municipal competition. Reducing the number of municipalities does not necessarily mean less government."

This would be due in part to most of the administrative staff of the amalgamated municipalities still being needed but another, more highly paid level of senior managers would be added. Service delivery effectiveness would be reduced due to the encumbrances inherent in large organizations.

Larger, slower, costlier are elements in the common story of centralism applied to service delivery platforms.

For any service delivery platform to succeed with the myriad of decisions made on a daily basis, localism is a necessary component and subsidiarity is the guiding principle.

Localism, as defined in the Cambridge dictionary, is the idea that people should have control over what happens in their local area, that local businesses should be supported, and that differences between places should be respected.

Having full control over what happens is not easy. It means taking responsibility for the results. This is hard so it is tempting to give away a little responsibility here and a little responsibility there to an organization.

As is often the case, organizations of the governmental variety are ready to entice local folks to give away their responsibility and the control that goes with it by using the argument of convenience and, of course, by making tasks easier for individuals.

This dynamic has progressively impacted voting opportunities since legislative changes were implemented in the 1990s.

And so we come to vote-by-mail and how convenient it is. Moreover, voting is so much easier to schedule when there are early voting days.

The result of this convenience and easiness is larger government and weaker communities.

Communities can be much better supported by having almost everyone vote on a single day making it a highly publicized event in their neighbourhood.

I prepared the examples below showing 3 situations where centralism is beneficial and 6 where it is not, and 12 where localism is beneficial.

Click here to see a larger version of the above image.

The image above is included in the social media post shown below.

The name of this legislative petition is: Initiative to change the voting opportunities in provincial elections.

The petition is described on the Current Initiative Petitions page of the Elections BC website along with the Public Notice which can be seen here.

The highest calling can be a sacred one or a military one.

Many people feel called to their professional role, albeit a well-paid choice, in the fields of health, education, justice, natural resources, manufacturing, food and research.

But also parenting roles and political roles are callings of the highest nature.

And a political role is held by each Registered Canvasser!

Two Initiative Petitions in British Columbia are currently registering Canvassers:

For the Voting Petition, its Canvassers are shown in a publicly available list on my Social Mavrik website, by name, marital status (Mr./Mrs./Ms./blank), and riding along with their political role:

Other political roles from the Canvasser's past may be shown on the One Day Voting list, at the Canvasser's discretion:

Established political roles for the future and planned ones may be listed:

To see the One Day Voting list with the political roles of 4 approved Canvassers enter "canv" into the search box when the list of 87 ridings appears on your screen after you click on the underlined blue lettering above.

Once you decide to register as a canvasser, of course there is an Elections BC application form. When a completed form is approved by the proponent (that's me) it is submitted to Elections BC. An official canvasser identification card is issued along with instructions on how to be a good canvasser and sent to the proponent who forwards it to the newly registered canvasser. The application form is here. Please send the completed form to this email address or mail it to the contact address shown below.

As I write there are 0 canvassers showing on the Elections BC list which may not be updated until August 9th.

Canvassers for this One Day Voting petition will be invited to occasional half-hour group Zoom calls hosted by me for training and strategizing plus question and answer conversations.

Not interested in defying court orders at the protest camp? How about a quiet but active process of obtaining one signature as a registered canvasser from an acquaintance who prefers in-person voting for almost everyone at a well attended community event in his or her neighbourhood.

The name of the second legislative petition in 2021 is: Initiative to conduct a Surrey policing binding referendum.

The petition is described on the Current Initiative Petitions page of the Elections BC website.

At the time of writing 0 canvassers are registered for signature gathering after August 16th from folks who prefer national policing over local policing.

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Bob Bray, President, Social Mavrik Federation

Phone: 250-504-0052

Mail: 784 Bowen Drive, Campbell River, British Columbia V9H 1S2

Email: bob.bray@socialmavrikbc.ca

Website: socialmavrikbc.ca

I posted the image below on facebook.com/bob.bray.334

and on mewe.com/i/bobbray1.

Click here to see a larger version of the above image.

Click here to see a larger version of the above image.

As of August 2nd the above tweet was seen 106 times with 2 engagements.