Flush the system

During the CA process, one STV doubter said that FPTP had one great advantage. When change is needed, FPTP allows voters an enhanced opportunity to "flush the system", whereas STV would tend to allow for more hanging on by those who should be leaving.

There are only two countries

There are only two countries using the STV system as the primary system - Malta and Ireland. Australia, Scotland and New Zealand all use it only in local elections. STV is not suited to large geographical areas due to difficult access to the area's representatives and the challenges the MLAs will have to meet. Malta has an area of 124 sq. miles, Ireland 26,600 sq. miles and B.C. 357,216 sq. miles. Ireland has 166 members, in 26 ridings, in half the area of this riding. Northwestern B.C. would have 3!!!

There is no problem with how we elect our MLAs as every vote is considered in the riding and the results are representative of the desires of that population. The problem is how we acquire our Premier. He/she is not elected but chosen by the party with the most members elected which is where the dispoprortion occurs. The solution is to have a separate vote to elect the Premier and keep the ridings as they are. I will be voting NO to the STV.

Yes so politicians have to think rather than pose!

I am voting Yes to STV to force political re-think by wanna be MLA's, their parties (if they have one) and the electorate!

Under STV, politicians don't have to work

In STV, a politician wouldn't even have to work hard to earn your vote. All they'd have to do is convince as little as 12.5% of a "riding" to vote for them and they're in. They could sleepwalk in the legislature for decades and never be held accountable.

Silly question perhaps

How can anyone 'like' more than one party?

Just asking. I can see someone might like a particular individual more than another individual - but a 'party'--- seems to be stretching it to me...

You Won't Be Stuck With It

People who are careful about plunging in to a new system should note. One of the recommendations of the Citizen's Assembly was that the province try this system for three election cycles, and then, once both parties and populace have had some hands-on experience with it, revisit the question.

Speaking from experience...

I hate to rain on the parade of all those innocents supporting the STV. I know, it just isn't sporting... but here goes.

Unlike all of you, I have lived under this system. Aussie governments quite simply suck - on either side. Nobody is responsible when you complain and it takes forever to get anything done.

We had something similar in the 1950s in B.C. for one election. It gave us Social Credit (who were unknowns, and with nobody from the CCF willing to put Liberal as their second choice, and nobody from the Liberals willing to put CCF as second, guess what happened?) Yep. Wacky Bennett and his gang of crackpots. Who immediately did away with the system, and kept power by having two member ridings.

But wait: there's more. We can have an unending series of coalition governments, and it will read like this: First of all, we'll get a new right wing religious party with about 15% of the vote, allowing the party currently running as "not the NDP" to move towards the center. Some center voters will then "vote for the center" in order to "lessen their dependence on the religious wackos"... but the center right party will, given a choice, always form a coalition with the religious anyway, rather than what so many of you hope for: the Greens, because all the bible thumpers want is funding for their pet projects. They'll vote for anything in exchange for that.

Then, every couple of elections a new center left party will spring up, and some of the supporters of the NDP will say "wouldn't it be nice to have a NDP government with this new party holding the balance of power!" But what will happen is that the NDP will simply lose votes and become increasingly irrelevant (the right won't) and so the new party will go into coalition with the right and have no power, and for one or two elections you will have voters crying "they had no right to do what they did!" And then that party will disappear, and soon after another will form in its place (Doubters may look to Israel, which has proportional reputation, for confirmation of this).

In short, be careful what you ask for. You may just get it.

R. Smiley

Bring it on !!! (for Smiley!)

Time to throw the political dick heads a curve!

STV in Scotland & Australia

Dan the Socialist wrote:
> Wow what spin. Only Malta and Ireland use
> it. Australian Senate uses it as some local
> governments in Scotland. Not the whole
> countries.

Dan, *all* local councils in Scotland use it, and also you'll find that *all* Australians vote in their Senate elections. So, yes, indeed the whole countries do use STV. But even if they didn't, that's not what Shoni said; she merely said "Voters in Ireland, Australia, Malta, Scotland and New Zealand use it successfully", which is clearly true.

Also, guess what? BC isn't a whole country, either. STV is only being proposed for a single province. So what happens in states and provinces elsewhere, such as Tasmania for example, seems to me to be extremely relevant.

STV Makes Good Sense

STV is absolutely the way to go. To not vote for STV because the counting system is more complex than first past the post is ridiculous. If you can do grade 5 math you can count STV ballots. The point is, you don't have to count them. Trained Elections BC people will count them. A more likely scenario is that a computer will count them. Check out http://trystv.ca to see how fast a computer can count an STV vote.

vote transfers

David Schreck wrote:
> How is it that someone who finishes ninth
> on the count of first preferences out of
> four to be elected can win over those with
> more than 3 times that candidate's first
> preferences?

Thanks for sharing this excellent example of STV at work!

Cyprian Brady of the FF Party was elected because that party had 44% of the first-preference votes, and 44% was in this case enough to elect 2 of the 4 seats.

In most districts, this 44% would have been evenly divided among the three FF candidates -- in fact, had it been exactly evenly divided, they would have started out 1,2,3 -- but in this case it was heavily concentrated on the one FF candidate with the highest profile, as is often the case when one of the candidates in your district is the national leader.

However, those voters, being such a large fraction of the total electorate, had the right to elect two of their candidates, and that's what they did.

If you were less focussed on the "candidate's first preferences" and more concentrated on the *voters*, this would be obvious to you.

Not One Pro-STV supporter has made the case...

Not one of the pro STVers has made a single convincing argument as to why someone who gets as little as 12.5% support from the population should have the ability to create laws.

Can anyone at least make a good case for this?

12.5%

First of all, the 12.5% figure applies in only one district. The more typical figures are 16.7% and 20%, for five- and four-seat districts, respectively.

In 1997, a Reform Party candidate in Manitoba was elected with 28.3% of the vote -- should he have been allowed to sit in a legislature? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkirk-Interlake#1997_-_present

Or Jack Weisgerber, who in the 1996 BC election, won his seat with 33% of the vote?

These are also quite low figures. In fact,
under first-past-the-post, there is actually *no* theoretical limit for how small a percentage of the vote a winning candidate might have.

In the 1993 federal election, the NDP won just 6.9% of the vote. Yet they elected 9 MPs. They got a lot less than 12.5% support -- should they have been shut out of the Parliament.

Obviously, I think not. In fact, I think that a party with 7% of the national vote should win about 20 seats out of 295, not nine.

So what about in BC? If the Green Party wins 9% of the vote, as they did in the last election, should that not translate into some seats? Under FPTP, it did not. Under STV, it will.

And where will those seats be? In the places where the Green candidates had the most support. Green Party results range from about 3% to about 20%, so it's going to be candidates with about 20% support who are elected. This really provides representation, not just for the 20% who voted from that candidate in that district, but for all the Green Party voters all over the province, even if the party has about 10% of the vote overall.

Let's get back to your question about 12.5%, which applies to the 7-seat district in the Capital Regional District. One possible result there might be NDP 4, Liberal 2, Green 1, which could happen if the NDP got over half the vote in the CRD. Let's suppose that's the case. One reasonable way of thinking about this is that the four NDP representatives each represents 12.5% of the electorate, having been elected due to the votes of that slice of voters. Another way of looking at it is that the four, together, represent (4 x 12.5%) = 50% of the voters.

So, although you *could* think of it as the vote having been sliced up into seven slices of 12.5%, each backing an individual candidate, most people (and the political parties) will probably think of it as having been divided up only three ways,
50% NDP -> 4 representives, 25% Liberal -> 2 representatives, 12.5% Green -> 1 representative. (Each of the parties will also have a "remainder", as perhaps will some smaller parties/independents, which explains why the total doesn't reach 100%.)

Does that help at all?

Thanks for the explanation

Hi Bison Ravi,

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in favour of reform but prefer a a majority vote system. However, I thank you for giving a reasonable and detailed defense of the 12.5% (and more) question. To be honest, while it didn't convince me, I think it was the best honest explanation of the entire STV system I've seen until now, and I'm sure it may have helped others on both sides of the issue.

I think it's obvious there's a desire for reform. Regardless of the result on May 12, let's keep striving and pressuring for it.

STV increases # of votes needed

STV actually *increases* the level of support you need to be an MLA.

Consider a riding with 20,000 voters. Under FPTP, you would automatically win if you had 10,001 votes but there have been cases where politicians have been elected with as little as 30% or, in this case, 6,000 votes.

Now, imagine that same constituency is grouped with 4 others under an STV riding. Now you have 5 MLA's representing 100,000 voters (same ratio as before). To be elected, you need 16.67% or 16,667 votes.

People can like more than one party

Reply to G West:

People can like more than one party and that is why there is so much "strategic voting". Under STV, you don't need to agonize whether to vote your heart or vote smart. You can do both.

Poor examples of STV

Malta:
Tiny country who have had to add seats due to disproportional outcomes in elections.

Poor because our geography is so different.

Australia;
Uses STV to elect only the upper house of parliament( and only half of them every 3 years). Uses a ballot called above/below the line voting where voters choose a party list of preferences and do not decide themselves. Last election 96% voted exactly how their party wanted them. The lower house is elected with single member constituencies.

Poor because we do not have a lower house to balance the upper house.

Scotland and NZ:
Both use for local elections only.

Ireland:
1.Imposed by the British government after a civil war as a way of protecting the Protestant minority in the south. The fear was that all elected officials would be Catholic and no Protestant view would be heard.
2.Ireland has tried to change to FPTP twice.
3.Number or parties that gained seats in last election; 6 + 5 independents.

1.Our history is different. Both main parties do have sustainability platforms and therefore some of the Green Party views are being heard,
2. If it is such a good system why did they want to change it to FPTP?
3.We have only 3 parties so the government could be controlled by how the third party votes.

Define Fair

Currently we have a three party system. If the election was proportional it is quite probable that the legislature would look something like 45% party 1, 40% party 10% party 3 and 5% independents.
To get anything done or stop anything the two leading parties would have to convince the third party to vote with them. This generally done by "trading favours" (I'll do this for you if you do that for me)

Is it fair that the Legislature could be controlled by the third party who only got 10% of the seats?

Party Voting

STV works best when parties are not involved. If we could rank each candidate by how well he/she reflects our views it would be great. That is not what will happen in our elections.

Since we have to be careful to vote in a majority of our selected parties we would probably just rank the candidates that belong to our party. We vote party not individual. The parties would probably give us the order to rank candidates to ensure the desired ones are elected.

Most vote transferring would be within parties not between them.