The Hook

I guess I vote "no".

It's the multi-member riding aspect of this proposal that has me voting "no" again. If you find a system that treats all ridings the same, you might have a point. Anyone voting should know exactly who their representative in Victoria is is and so should anyone in Victoria know exactly which area and which constituents they represent and are accountable to. Everything I hear only creates confusion and allows people to go to Victoria and represent only a certain select group in the riding. It is confusing as hell and ridings in rural BC would be huge.

Correction and Comment

Frank, indeed, that's what I said (ie, both that the NDP won 21.6% of the vote and that >42% of voters voted other than Liberal).

Skywalker, with BC-STV, the voter knows precisely who their MLA is - he or she is the one amongst the group of those elected who you placed highest on your ballot. Each MLA is what I call 'fully supported'. With our current system, you can be sent to Victoria with only 30-odd percent of the voters in your district supporting you; with BC-STV, essentially a full riding's worth of voters have given you their support. This empowers an MLA to speak clearly on behalf of those who have supported them. In my view, STV provides a powerful mechanism to give them back their voice.

Tony

So you are in one of those 6 member ridings that is 400 km from one end to the other, maybe more. Which one of the six will feel obliged to look after your interests? You may even find yourself at one end of the riding with all 6 members having their offices in the largest settlement at the other end. How do you access your representative the same way those pampered urban folks do down south who have a single member Riding? Sure it's a better system!

Distributing Responsibilities

Skywalker, take a look at what happens in Ireland: http://tinyurl.com/d4steq. Representatives tend to come from all over the map in rural regions.

In practice, MLAs from larger parties tend to distribute constituency responsibilities geographically - one becomes known for representing one portion of the riding; another for another. Every MLA will feel obliged to respond if you come calling - with STV, over 80% of votes are needed, on average, to win election, and MLAs will understand this. If you start blowing off constituents, you'll lose next time. There's little structural motivation under our current system for MLAs in safe seats to give good service, but they tend to do so anyway. Why would an MLA who has even more investment in providing good service not provide it? In Ireland, no-one complains about TDs not paying attention to constituents. In fact, some have sometimes claimed the opposite. Personally, I think a lot of us in BC would think that a little more responsiveness from our MLAs would be a good thing.

Misleading

The way the article starts off it seems like the writer wanted to make it sound that the event was poorly attended.

In actual fact, the room's capacity was 100 people, so any more than that would have been impossible. Add to that the downpour outside and you get a very good turnout.

These debates are things we really need more of, democracy is so much more than a vote.

Tony

Why not go whole hog and support MMP - that's the gold standard in my view.

There's nothing wrong with party lists as long as the process to get on that list is regulated.

And the gaming possibilities with STV in large multi-member ridings are reduced.

G West

G West, I once thought that MMP would have been the way to go, but I like STV even more. As I said at this event, discussions amongst electoral reform advocates about MMP and STV amount to trying to decide whether one gets an A and the other a B or vice versa, when we all agree that FPTP rates a bare pass.

I agree with the vast majority of the Citizens' Assembly that BC voters have a strong attachment to voting for particular candidates, and the experience in Ontario and PEI suggests that MMP might have a hard time breaking 40-50% here. I disagree that MMP is 'the gold standard' - people in the north would not accept it. Think about how it would likely work. There are current 8 seats up there - with MMP, we'd probably create 4 or 5 single-member constituencies, essentially doubling the area served by each constituency MLA. These would likely be predominantly Liberal MLAs. The list MLAs would likely be predominantly NDP ones, and would be responsible for covering the entire northern half of the province. Most northerners would see their local representation being cut in half and would not trust that the list MLAs would adequately represent their part of the province.

In contrast, with STV the north retains 3 distinct regions - the Northwest, the Peace, and the Prince George area. Each retains its current complement of MLAs. With STV, a 3 seat district is likely to produce two members from one of the main parties and one from the other - the pair from a given party will tend to split the coverage for constituency issues, so this will give local representation roughly equivalent to what we'd get with a 67/33 MMP split (which would be better than the 50/50 or 60/40 constituency/list ratio than is usually proposed). The third MLA would represent the primary opposition view in that district, so their area of geographic responsibility would be more tightly defined than with the list MLAs of MMP.

Finally, I don't understand what you mean by 'gaming possibilities' - every 25% of the vote wins you a candidate with STV. How can this be gamed?

Tony

Thanks for responding - I don't agree - but STV is better than FPP.

Therefore, as I've said before, I'll hold my nose and vote yes.

As for the quality of the 'advice' from the Citizens' Assembly and their bona fides as representatives of the INTERESTS of all British Columbians, let's just say I don't think they do and the feverishness with which the group has pushed its little agenda has always made me very nervous.

Cheers.

If STV doesn't reach the 60% goal this time, I hope the Coalition will go away and we can move on to a better solution.