If George Wins This Thing

Rumour has it that George's campaign team has already selected his leadership win campaign theme song ....

Hey There Georgy Girl......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf8O1whEH5s

Simply no clue

1. We've already got one. Had him for ten years. Didn't seem to hurt your desire for more of the same any. Indicates the state of morality among those who think free enterprise belongs only to Ayn Rand's disciples.

2. No program, no coherent economic plan, no friends, no answers to BC Rail.

No premiership. Simple as that, no matter how creepy your promotion of her feral looks.

Hypocricy in voting system

Clearly the second choice ballot "give the eventual winner legitimacy in the eyes of the press and the public" and insures "a genuine majority is responsible for electing the leader" otherwise "it would be possible to win with the support of fewer than 50 per cent of the membership".

How reasonable these statements sound. Yet the Liberal party strongly opposed STV (Single Transferable Vote), which is similar to the ranked ballot being debated, for provincial elections. The Liberal party strongly supports an electoral system where a party with less than 50% of the votes can obtain a majority government. This is simply because Liberals have the most to lose.

The weak opposition from pro Falcon supporters, who also have the most to lose, are repeating the same lines the STV opponents used a few years ago.

The proposed ballot system will elect a leader of the Liberal Party through consensus rather than a high school popularity contest. Now if only we could do the same at the Provincial level.

Hypocrisy!

Ouch.

STV with a twist

The STV of our famed referendum allowed plumping. I'm guessing that the term includes any ballot that does not rank all the candidates. I'm also not sure if it means that a ballot could be cast with, say, the first,
third and sixth ranking, leaving the second, fifth and fourth rankings blank. Or if the rankings are automatically ranked ordinately (or is that cardinally?) so that, in the above example, the third ranking becomes the "second" choice and the sixth the "third."

Could anyone explain what "second choices" must be cast means. Does it mean that any two out of six (in the Liberals case) rankings could be chosen, or only number one and number two. Would ballots marked otherwise be spoiled? Is one allowed to choose number one and number six, for example?

Now, there are bound to be some BC Liberal members who are as dumb (or as contrarian) as I am. I'd be hoping that whatever the rules are, the explanation given by both the party executive and the candidate I signed on to support are the same. Otherwise there might be some confusion. Would any of the candidates sow any confusion for their own advantage? Naw, BC Liberals would never play sneaky games like that, would they?

Who would candidates advise their supporters to pick as second choice, whatever ranking that might mean? Would they wait till the last minute? Would they leave it up to the individual member to decide? What if I objected to the second-choice recommendation of the candidate I signed on to support? Maybe I'd change my first choice. Hell, just being forced to make a second choice, whatever that means, might be enough to make me reconsider my first choice. Maybe just pick it out of a hat.

Man O man! am I ever glad we voted down STV for provincial elections. Gonna love watching the Liberals go through it, though.

Only 1342 Liberals left?

So the Liberals are down to 1,342 actual members that care enough to vote?

What happened to all of those new members? Looks like the party has been reduced to being nothing more than friends and families of the candidates and Campbell.

metacomet

I doubt you can pick a 6th choice without picking a 2nd through 5th.

And what would be the point? Your first choice counts in each round until that person is eliminated. So let's say the first ballot votes are counted and your 1st choice comes in last and is dropped. That means whoever you had written down as your 2nd choice would now get your vote.

If you were allowed to not have a 2nd through 5th choice then your ballot would simply no longer be counted at all until the 6th round and that's only assuming your 6th choice is still in the process and the process is till going.

STV continued

As metacomet shows, many people didn't understand how STV works and voted against it due to the rhetoric.

Yes with STV you can choose just one person on a ballot - plumping - but you are losing your right to representation. If your 1st choice does not have enough votes that person is eliminated as is your voice. The same thing currently occurs if you vote for the green party - your vote becomes worthless because it is not transferable to NDP or Lib which has more votes. (I don't necessarily support any of these parties - they are just examples so bear with me)

With STV you could vote for who you truly agreed with while keeping a safety by voting NDP or Lib to counter the other. (Or vote 1st for NDP, then green... or vice versa with the Libs)

So getting back to ranking people on your ballot 1, 3, 5 has the exact same effect as writing 1, 2, 3 (unless the software is defective by design).

By forcing a second choice on ballots a everyone should be more content with the outcome. Perhaps most people want Falcon as their first choice but more people would rather have someone else - that's what STV style ballots can achieve.

A candidate with minority support is a good thing?

I can't think of any party anywhere that uses first-past-the-post to select their leader.

With 7 candidates you could have a party leader selected by as little as roughly 15% of the party.

That's why parties have traditionally (in the days of delegated conventions) allowed delegates to switch their support from one candidate to another as candidates were defeated. It means the final choice has over 50% support even though they didn't when the convention started.

@Cyrille re: STV

Both the NDP and the Liberals took no official positions on STV. I think Harry Lali was the only MLA to take a position one way or another; he opposed STV.

Only 1342 Liberals left? NO

Those are delegates the party membership sent forward. Period, full stop.

what a "democracy"

Out of 3.2 million eligible voters in the province of BC (election BC figures) 1.5 million cast a vote in the last provincial election.

Of the number of eligible voters in this province, less than 4% belong to a political party but this is inflated by leadership contests which see their rosters grow by eager candidates and their supporters solicitng "drive-by" members.

The 1342 delegates who took a few hours out of their day to cast ballots at the recent BC Liberal gathering indicates that the percentage of eligible voters in the province who bother to participate in party politics and engage in their party's policy process, 4%, may be a very very very generous figure.

And this is how we allow such a few individuals in this province to select the next leader of the province. A leader who will wield more power than former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.

I just hope citizens of Tunisia and Egypt don't use BC as an example for their vision of democracy.

I thought I had it all thunk out...

I figured my solution was a sure thing before I read all of the comments. Here is what I emailed to an NDP friend:
" New rules for selecting a Liberal candidate to run for party leader in the next election means that you have to pick two--your first choice and your second choice---or, your vote won't count. This applies to all Liberal party members who will be able to make the selection at the end of this month. In other words, I want to select a first and second choice who have no chance against a good NDP leader. It gets kind of complicated. Suppose all the people who support Abbott put him first on the ballot and Clark as their second choice. Then those that support Clark would put her as their first choice, and possibly Abbott as their second choice. Then those people that support Falcon would put him as their first choice and possibly Clark as their second choice. All things being equal, Clark would be elected as party leader. Sort of a dark horse winner by winning one first and two seconds."
Am I right??

Preferential ballots are best

So the Liberal Party has recognized the benefits of a preferential ballot, one in which candidates are ranked 1st, 2nd 3rd etc.
Will the Liberal government please let us use the same kind of ballot to elect our mayors. At the last election of mayors in 2008 there were at least two mayors elected with about 30% of the vote. It is quite possible that there were other candidates who the voters preferred to the ones elected. A preferential ballot would have solved this problem.
Preferential ballots are not currently allowed under the Local Government Act (some people dispute this).

Liberal Party Representation Rules

Is the BC Liberal Party slouching toward proportional representation?

Abbott less polarizing ?

"Several think ... the second preferences ... are more likely to go to Abbott and de Jong, rather than more polarizing figures like Falcon and Clark."

Not long ago, as Health Minister, George polarized the province by breaching the HEU contract, an un-business-like tack.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/06/08/Bill29Dies/

"Government understood Bill 29 to be legal and constitutional under the jurisprudence prevailing at the time the bill was passed. ..."

He didn't explain this statement, the legal advice before or the supreme court ruling.

He commented that he'd do it again.

His polariized misunderstanding cost us all $80 million.

The reason for this strange voting system.

It would appear that the divisions in the liberals are huge. They are worried that if the folks cast ballot with a single name on it, and that person loses, people won't bother to vote again. The second choices are so repugnant to them. Think of how that will look when the final votes are cast and counted. The winner wins by a minority of the members present because the majority didn't like the choices left. It is all a bit hilarious.