Incumbency in Ireland

Oh, by the way, incumbency rates in Ireland and BC are virtually identical - an incumbent contesting a seat in both places has about an 80% of retaining it. The main difference is that in BC, an incumbent tends to only lose their seat if the fortunes of their party as a whole are falling and they are in one of the 25% of ridings in the province that are swing ridings, whereas in Ireland, an incumbent tends to lose their seat to another candidate from their own party once their supporters start to feel that they're no longer being served well.

Since STV is so effective at allowing voters to specify exactly which politician they want to represent them, we shouldn't be surprised that most politicians are relatively responsive and therefore relatively successful. I'm not sure most BC voters would say that the reason incumbents are as successful in winning re-election here is that they have provided outstanding service - instead, they're the only game in town, as voters here never get a chance to choose between different candidates from the same party and so have no effective means of removing an MLA from office without voting against their preferred party. Needless to say, this rarely happens.

Rediculous Arguments against BC-STV

There are so many fallacies here, I don't know where to start, except to say that the Citizens' Assembly dutifully considered all the numerous pros and cons, including all the issues raised here. After studying them for ten months, with assistance of many political experts and their own B.C. experience, they concluded there was no contest - BC-STV is far superior on every significant aspect to our antiquated system.
David Schreck makes it sound as if STV is only used in a few places. STV is used in 7 countries at the national level, for election of at least 46 governments at the level immediately below the national level, i.e. the provincial level, and about 340 governmental bodies of one sort and another. It was used in parts of Alberta and Manitoba without creating any of the sort of 'chaos' and 'disaster' that is imagined. It's a safe and sure voting system.
B.C. had multi-member ridings until 1991, and they resulted in more women getting elected. Studied statistically, governments with proportional representation like STV lead to more stable governments, faster economic growth, and lower unemployment. That's what we need in B.C. right now.

vote for STV tomorrow

Why was this published just a few hours before the polls open? It's almost as though the editors weren't particularly bothered whether anyone read it.

The media coverage of STV has been, if anything, worse than in 2005. And it was terrible then.

Schreck can't have it both

Schreck can't have it both ways -- impossibility of local representation and accountability with multi-member constituencies, VERSUS increased importance of pandering to local interests in getting elected (a default emphasized in the Irish Times article he cites). It pains me as a life-long CCFer/NDPer that the NDP would never form a majority government under STV (barring some change in public thinking -- or yet further moves to the "right" in NDP policies). BUT our existing system provides far too much scope for extremists to make irreversible changes which would not be popularly supported if understood. The Campbell sell-out to corporations (land, services, etc.) is a prime example. Even if Shreck is right that the party machines would have more control over nominees under STV, we would nevertheless have more parties (and shades of opinion) represented in government than at present.

Vote for the current system.

Yes we had multi-member ridings, but without STV so that's not a justification. They did not work that well then either. How many of those countries and jurisdictions at different level have multi-member representation of a given area. I'll wager not many so David is probably more accurate..

Higher Likelihood of Corruption Under Single Party Governments

One factor that few people have discussed is the increased ease of corruption under single party government. If you need the help of a second party to get your legislation passed, as you would with STV, it has to undergo more scrutiny. Under our current system, not even the governing party's own MLAs are always consulted in advance (witness recent events in our own province). This provides remarkable opportunities for paying off your supporters without scrutiny.

Frank2 Is Bang On - STV Makes Politicians Accountable

One thing Irish politicians have never been accused of is being unresponsive. Why are they so responsive? Because the voting system makes them so. They are highly accountable to their constituents and more easily removed as individuals than under any other voting system I know.

Skywalker - Think of Sweden

Skywalker, most Nordic countries have multimember representation. Sweden's system is remarkably like STV - mini-regions with representatives chosen from an open list. I see very little practical difference between Sweden's system and STV, except that STV's districts are more geographically compact, which is what rural and northern British Columbians told the CA they wanted.

Nothing stellar about STV

Just a more complicated way to achieve mediocrity. After all you can even get a similar mix of elected representatives like that which already exist federally. What's the point.

There is just no guarantee STV will produce better results.

Complicated? So what?

I'd rather a complicated system that delivers a better democratic result than a simple system that fails to represent more than half of voters. Besides, if the naysayers are claiming BC-STV to be too "complicated," "confusing," even "baffling" to them, why should anyone believe their interpretation of that system?

Spoken like a true banker/mortgage lender.

A bold assumption on your part. It's not ""complicated," "confusing," even "baffling"", it's just not any more capable of providing good government than the current system and further it barely qualifies as democratic because of the math required. It's almost like 'negative option billing.'

Snert

I wrote: IF THE NAYSAYERS ARE CLAIMING it's "complicated," "confusing," even "baffling" ...

That's not MY assumption. That's theirs (and yours? you did write off the system as undemocratic "because of the math required"). You can find such claims by Schreck, Tieleman & Co. all over the media, in local papers and the major dailies.

The system doesn't baffle me and understanding it, I'm in full agreement with the Citizens Assembly. Whatever its flaws, and no system is perfect, BC-STV is vastly superior to what we have now,

Oh, no, not that one again!

"I see very little practical difference between Sweden's system and STV".

Good grief - do people really believe that this is an argument that can be won through exhaustion? I urge you to look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Sweden

Where it says:

"Seats in the various legislative bodies are allocated amongst the Swedish political parties proportionally using a modified form of the Sainte-Laguë method."

And then see the resulting seat distribution - the stuff dreams are made of, nothing like dismissing 16% of the votes. Why should we live with that?

There also is no hint of ever ending up in a situation like the one that can actually happen with the STV, that the final allocation of a seat must be done BY LOTTERY - in my view enough all by itself to reject the method. Can it get more disrespectful of the voters?

It is 'just too bad' that the pressure-cooker method has not worked with the electorate of BC, but you should not resort to misinformation to hammer through what is dear to your hearts.

There is no way around doing this the hard, honest way: back to the drawing board, engage the elctorate in a real debate, and get something that can be endorsed in all honesty by a solid majority of BC'ers.

I feel heartily sorry for the members of the Assembly. You have good reason to feel used and feel angry. You were sucked into accomodating a very cynical political agenda and now obviously are desperate to try damage control and save the results of your hard honest work. The bad news is, you were sold down the river, and we must wait for next round.

Your efforts will not be forgotten and can certainly be built on, but they only provide a foundation, not the finished building.

There is only one way to impress on our reluctant government that we will see this done the right way: Reject the STV.

given real choices for electoral reform

mmphosis

You need a third in order to be fair. The current FPTP system. Some peopl just like it as it is and you can't assume everyone favors change. That is reality.

cocean

So you're in favour of replacing one imperfect system with another one, interesting.

System and presentation poor

I’m one of the rare, it seems, persons who has examined STV rules for counting ballots and who has worked through examples of the count.

I oppose STV for the following reasons –

- The count is unfair. Some ballots are counted in one way, other ballots in another. Some voters influence the election outcome beyond the effect of single votes.

- A seventh choice has the same weight as a second. The election of a seventh choice is presented as a win.

- Proponents have been reluctant to explain how STV works.

- Proponents have made mutually contradictory claims.

- Proponents have equated a significant public responsibility with personal consumer choice; presented a voting system as ballot marking; and discouraged voters from--and even warned them off--becoming informed. Trivializing, patronizing and insulting have marked the campaign.

- Endorsements have referred to change as in itself a good thing. Some have been of a well-why-not nature--a casual way of looking at a decision of broad social consequence.

I appreciate the work that CA members must have done and I regret that their website has been kept private. I'm grateful for the answers one of them provided to me. But I’m beginning to suspect they were sold something and were sent off to cheerlead for it. Sad.

STV is Great

el, I've read a lot about STV, attended presentations and worked through the counting. It's great. It's a proportional system that is candidate-centred, not party-centred. A few brief replies:

1. If you think that some votes are worth more than 1, you don't quite understand the counting yet. Sometimes votes are fractionalized but they never count for more than 1 in contributing towards elected candidates.

2. In reality, it's going to be rare for people to be elected just on 7th choices but 7th choices might be enough to push someone over the edge. STV measures aggregate popularity, not just first choices.

3. Proponents have been reluctant to verbally explain how the counting works because it's difficult to explain. Try explaining how to knot a tie or how to do long division. Some things just lend themselves to demonstrations. There have been many of them and in fact there are a couple of excellent demos on the web. Look at trystv.ca

4. The pro side had literally thousands of volunteers and it would be extremely difficult to have that many people say the same thing. Still, I've followed the debate closely and the most outrageous things have come from the no side. Did you know STV will allow Nazis to be elected?

5. I don't know what to say about the next point except that I and everybody I know on the yes side has always encouraged people to become better informed. The yes side held more info sessions than I can count (although, regrettably, a lot of them were sparsely attended).

6. There are a lot of people out there who are sick to death of the current system and are willing to try anything just to shake it up. I don't personally think that STV needs to be sold this way. It's a great system and where voters have it, they are very reluctant to give it up.

No Lottery With STV

Dorothy, there's no lottery with STV - the last person to be elected is determined by a direct comparison of how many votes each has won - the one with the most wins. Check out TrySTV.ca for many near-real-life examples.

When I said that there was little practical difference between STV and Sweden's system, what I meant was that they each have regions within the country, within which representatives are elected on a proportional basis and where votes can be cast for particular candidates. Obviously there are minor technical differences in how votes are cast, the relative advantages of which are open to debate.

Lottery

I suspect what Dorothy meant by 'lottery' is that, in the unlikely event of an exact tie between two candidates, the tie can be broken by drawing lots.

A tie can happen in any voting system. It can happen in her precious list-PR. It can happen in two ways in MMP, at the level of the constituencies and at the level of the lists.

It can happen under FPTP, the system Dorothy seemingly plans to vote for. It actually did happen in the riding of Vuntut Gwitchin in Yukon in 1996:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukon_general_election,_1996

The name of a candidate was drawn from a hat.

I'm not aware of anything similar having happened in practice in an STV election, though it might have.

horse sense?

first past the post means exactly that: one single vote can skew the outcome.
Even in horseracing they give credit to number 2 - 3 and 4 , but in our elections nobody but number one counts.

After the referendum

The vigorous Tyee debate between the proponents of STV and FPTP has clearly shown the rest of us that these are two of the worst electoral systems. We rejected STV in the earlier referendum, and now our government is trying to stuff it down our throats again, without even the option of voting, 'Neither of the above'. This is happening because our rulers judge that STV is no threat. Although STV is approximately proportional for parties with large support, it is very unfair to small parties. Under it, government will pass back and forth between Liberals and NDP without interference from minorities such as the Greens and Conservatives.

Some Greens seem to be backing STV because they believe that their party will soon gain more support. They are probably deluded. The other parties will steal the more appealing parts of their program. World governments will fail to implement an effective system of carbon credits and will reject geo-engineering. The temperature will go up, or not go up, and in any case environmental disaster will threaten. The voters will not want to know and the Greens will cry in the wilderness.

No matter what the outcome of the referendum, we must not give up the struggle for a better system. A mildly proportional version of MMP can retain the advantages of FPTP while ensuring some representation of minorities. The additional members in MMP need not be chosen from party lists, but could be the best-performing, losing candidates in the constituencies.

A more interesting possibility is to modify FPTP by allowing electors to vote for or against candidates. Minority parties and independents could then be elected by 'coming up the middle' between deadlocked major parties.

fractionalized votes

A vote that is fractionalized (while other votes are not) elects an MLA and contributes to the election of additional MLAs. While the fractions of votes technically add up to one, the effect is greater than one.

el

Any actual evidence of that?

Gruvesome

If anyone thought the opposition to STV was vocal it would pale in comparison to the opposition against MMP.

IN PEI and Ontario MMP got only 36% of the vote.

I'm sure there will never be another referendum on electoral reform but if there is and its MMP on the ballot I will happily oppose it as its a terrible system.

Gruvesome to Frank

I agree, the MMP system as proposed in Ontario is very bad. One must look for a system which is part way between that and FPTP - and perhaps closer to FPTP. One needs a little proportionality but not too much.

Gruvesome to Frank

I agree, the MMP system as proposed in Ontario is very bad. One must look for a system which is part way between that and FPTP - and perhaps closer to FPTP. One needs a little proportionality but not too much.

refer to babies and bathwater

I'm considering voting for BC-STV. But, I've found difficulty with yes-side's arguments not following logic. Since the burden of proof is on the yes-side for arguing change, please explain how these yes-side comments are valid:

1) the official stv.ca website cites STV as better because it is more "fair", "effective", "democratic". These comments are biased, without doubt. But worse, only 'label' opponents instead of addressing their concerns. (Respect the proposition of half the population who voted no last time). Opponents to STV don't prefer "unfairness", "ineffectiveness" and "undemocratic"-ness. Why the subjective terminology on the yes-side... as compared to using objective terminology? Insults and insulting terms don't have a place in open discourse.

2) Being 'sick and tired' of the current 'antiquated' system isn't an argument IN FAVOUR of STV. At the least it means changing/making more ridings... or at most putting forth a referendum on a choice of DIFFERENT proportional systems... not just STV. Isn't that REAL choice?

3) yes-side claims that STV 'AUTOMATICALLY' produce positive results. Incorrect statements like that isn't valid. For example, it's said that STV AUTOMATICALLY produces more 'local representation' by having more representatives per new-riding. Not in Ireland. Parties simply run the same number of candidates in each 'district' to produce the same number of representatives as when there were individual 'ridings'.

3b) Another example of claims of AUTOMATIC positive results from STV from posters like "votinginBC" say QUOTE "...STV lead to... faster economic growth, and lower unemployment". STV's? Themselves? This is correlation, invalid, and a sample of logic-problems that the yes-side needs to address.

So, when reviewing yes-side posts/sites, why does the quantity of items deemed as rhetoric outnumber the quantity of items deemed as facts?