B.C. Local Government Elections Task Force

"Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world"

Archimedes, 220 BC

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With the hecticity of moving, plus keeping the regular Tuesday schedule for the series on ethics, I’ve let something slide that I meant to post on a long time ago.

The provincial government in B.C. convened a task force to study possible reform to how municipal elections are conducted in B.C.

Paul Willcocks had a good post on the topic, and Sacha, at Double Blind, expressed his opinion (which I 90% agree with) as well.

There are 6 topics under review:

· Campaign finance, including contribution/spending disclosure and limits, and tax credits
· Enforcement processes and outcomes
· Role of the chief electoral officer (B.C.) in local government elections
· Election cycle (term of office)
· Corporate vote
· Other agreed upon matters (e.g. matters raised in UBCM resolutions such as eligibility of local government volunteers to be candidates)

The website also provides discussion papers on all of these topics.

Due to my tardiness, the deadline for submissions is tomorrow (e.g. April 15) so if you have something you want to say to the government, do it quickly. Reform in how elections are conducted is the sort of thing that can have an impact far behind what seems apparent at first glance, as it influences who gets elected, which in turn influences all the policy that gets implemented and how our elected representatives behave and so on. My point is that I highly recommend anyone concerned about local governance in B.C. to make themselves heard, either email to:

localelectionstaskforce@gov.bc.ca

Or fill in the submission form

My submission is included below. On the off-chance that anyone wishes to use my words in their own submission, be my guest.

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Dear Task Force, please see the following for my comments on the topics under review, organized by topic:

Re: Campaign finance, including contribution/spending disclosure and limits, and tax credits

I believe that campaign contributions should only be made by individuals as opposed to organizations. Organizations represent special interests, whereas individuals reflect the full spectrum of human interests. Given that all organizations are comprised of individuals, there seems to be no reason to allow donations to be made by organizations. This would mean no campaign contributions from unions, corporations, charities, or other organizations.

Within the class of individuals, only those residing within a given community should be eligible to make donations.

In terms of personal contributions, I support legislation mandating (relatively high) contribution limits or at the least mandating timely (i.e. prior to the election) disclosure of any contributions exceeding a certain dollar threshold (e.g. $100). This could be supported by banning donations above the threshold from taking place within a certain time period (e.g. 7 days) prior to the election. Providing disclosure prior to the election would allow voters to take this information into consideration in their voting decisions.

Anonymous campaign contributions should be illegal above a low threshold (e.g. $20). Transparency is the friend of good government, secrecy is not.

I support public financing of electoral candidates for municipal elections (similar to the federal model), although I acknowledge that the implementation might be tricky in the non-party based world of municipal politics. One possibility would be to offer public financing of a flat amount, where this amount needs to be repaid by any candidate earning less than a certain percentage of the popular vote. This would keep the system relatively simple, avoid any bias for or against political parties and their members, and prevent people from running simply to collect the public subsidy.

Alternatively, passing legislation that enables municipal governments to set their own bylaws with respect to campaign finance laws would be a good first step.

The general principles of campaign finance should be the provision of a level playing field for all members of society, and the provision of as much information (on a timely basis) to the voters as current technology allows.


Re: Enforcement processes and outcomes

I do not feel I have the necessary experience or expertise to comment on this matter in a useful manner.


Re: Role of the chief electoral officer (B.C.) in local government elections

I do not see a need for elections BC to get significantly more involved in municipal elections. The one area where I see a possible benefit is in providing a central point of information collection and distribution. i.e. Elections BC could maintain a website/information service containing information relating to municipal elections (e.g. candidate eligibility rules, campaign finance rules, disclosure of contributions, etc.) across the province. This would help with ensuring that the information was widely accessibly and presented in a standardized format across the province.


Re: Election cycle (term of office)

The current election cycle of three years seems reasonable and I see no reason to fix this unbroken clock. Having said that, I don’t see that switching to a four year election cycle would really cause any serious harm either.


Re: Corporate vote

I am a strong believer in the principle of one person, one vote and do not believe that people who own corporations should be allowed to cast more votes than those who don't.

Aside from the practical difficulties, the fact that in a world of democracy it is almost unheard of for corporations to be allowed to vote and the fact that B.C. has tried this approach before and rejected it, the underlying rationale does not make any sense.

From the materials provided on the website, the primary rationale seems to be that by allowing corporations to vote, their interests will be taken into greater consideration. This is certainly true, but you could make the same argument for pets. If, for example, dog owners, were allowed one additional vote for every dog they owned, it seems likely that policies more beneficial to dogs would be implemented. This does not, however, seem like a reasonable approach. Just as there is no logical reason why the interests of dogs deserves special consideration that takes precedence over the principle of one-person, one-vote, so to, there is no logical reason why the interests of corporations deserves special consideration that takes precedence over the principle of one person, one vote.

Finally, I believe that anyone casting a vote should be a person who reflects the full range of human experience and emotion. A corporation, by nature, is specifically limited in focus to making a profit, whereas human voters consider a wide range of matters, from having a strong economy, to having an aesthetically pleasing built and natural environment, to human safety, to the legacy left for our children and so on. Allowing additional votes to be cast by entities that represent only one facet of the human experience (striving for material gain) without adding additional votes to entities that represent other facets of human experience will bias election results in favour of a certain aspect of humanity at the expense of other aspects.


Re: Other agreed upon matters (e.g. matters raised in UBCM resolutions such as eligibility of local government volunteers to be candidates)

No comment.

Thank you for your consideration of my comments,
Declan.

Electoral Reform in Canada

This post is not about the question of what the best electoral system is, or whether we should adopt proportional representation. Instead, I am assuming that part (see here for my clearest exposition on why), and considering the political question of how best to get proportional representation implemented in Canada.


There have been 4 referendums on electoral reform in Canada recently and I sincerely hope that there are some academic types out there studying and analyzing this period in Canadian politics.

In reverse chronological order, they were:

Province / Year / % of eligible votes cast in favour of electoral reform
B.C. / 2009 / 39%
Ontario / 2007 / 37%
P.E.I. / 2005 / 36%
B.C. / 2005 / 58%

The two B.C. referendums were on switching to a Single Transferrable Vote (STV) system, while the Ontario and P.E.I. referendums were on switching to a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) type system.

Here is a collection of thoughts in no particular order:

1) The technical details are very important, so for the most part, reform is only likely to happen if the party in power wants it to happen, or if it can be politically outmaneuvered by reform forces. Even if a party is pressured into starting some sort of reform process, constant vigilance and effort will be required to make sure they do not sabotage it in some way, either deliberately or accidentally.

2) If a referendum is held for reform, the most important technical detail is the threshold for support. Reformers need to push back against the notion that countries can declare independence with a 55% vote but it takes 60% support to change the electoral system.

3) It may be better to try and turn the First Past the Post system against itself. Supporters of FPTP argue that it is good because it allows us to 'get things done' without the pesky need to get a majority vote in favour. If a political party could be persuaded to support reform as part of their platform, then they could win election with the usual 35-40% of the vote and simply implement the reform that was part of their platform.

4) Fair Vote Canada may want to emulate the tactics of the Taxpayers Federations in attempting to browbeat party leaders into signing 'pledges' to support reform during the election campaign when leverage against parties is at its peak. These sorts of political promises to at least hold a referendum on reform were key in getting reform implemented in New Zealand.


5) After the question of the need for a referendum and the threshold for a referendum, the next most important technical detail is the wording of the question.

The 2005 B.C. referendum asked the following question:

"Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform?

-> Yes

-> No"

The 2009 referendum asked the following question:

"Which electoral system should British Columbia use to elect members to the Provincial Legislative Assembly?

-> The existing electoral system (First Past the Post)

-> The single transferrable vote electoral system (BC-STV) proposed by the Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform"

I believe it was the change in wording of the question which accounted for the large majority of the drop in support for reform from 58% to 38% from 2005 to 2009. I realize it is perhaps insulting to accuse at least 20% of the voting public of being so irrational as to choose an electoral system based on how the question is posed to them, but nonetheless I believe that to be the case. If true, it certainly casts doubt on the legitimacy of using referenda to decide such questions since there would be such a large percentage of the population seemingly incapable of understanding what they are being asked.

At any rate, a little bit of polling could establish:
a) The impact of the question on people's willingness to support reform
b) The specific wording of the question that would most tend to encourage people to vote in favour (I suspect that the B.C. 2005 question, which framed the question as whether to positively accept a recommendation from a citizen's assembly would be close to ideal, as opposed to the 2009 question which asked people whether to keep the status quo or vote for some strange sounding proposal

I don't know what Fair Vote Canada's finances are like, but my opinion is that this type of research (which would have global applicability and thus could be coordinated through Fair Vote Org) has the best chance of producing concrete results towards achieving reform.

6) In Canada, the failure of 4 referendums in 4 years to achieve reform makes it difficult to pursue further reform in the short term. One solution may be to emulate the Conservative strategy for achieving Senate reform, and try to break the problem down into achievable 'bite-size' chunks.

6 b) One of the best candidates for this gradualist approach might be to support a switch to instant-runoff voting. Although instant runoff voting would not cure problems of disproportionality it would accomplish a few things:

- it would show that changing the way we vote doesn't cause the end of the world (much in the same way that getting rid of the penny would likely lead to increased support for getting rid of the nickel)

- it would eliminate the need for strategic voting

- by eliminating the need for strategic voting, it would weaken the forces working against 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. parties, reducing the pressure from the FPTP system to reduce us back to two parties - a pressure which is in turn a threat to reform, since the more the party system fragments, the more parties supporting reform there are likely to be, the less power the main parties will have, and the more dysfunctional the current archaic FPTP system will be shown to be

One advantage of instant runoff voting is that, unlike proportional representation which is typically supported by those parties which will never gain the power under the current system to implement it, instant runoff voting tends to support centrist parties which in turn tend to win elections, meaning it may be possible for reformers to ally with a centrist party which would see instant runoff voting as being in their interest which would likely guarantee passage of this reform.

6 c) Following this train of thought, it might be possible to package reform 'products' that are suitable to different parties. An agreement to support Senate Reform in return for support on Electoral Reform for Right Wing parties, a package to implement PR for parties that normally are disadvantaged by the old FPTP system, a package that includes instant runoff voting for a centrist party with rivals on either side of the left-right spectrum.


7) In terms of gaining support for reform in a referendum, having politicians in an MMP type system get elected based on party lists is a very big weakness. I don't like this aspect of MMP much myself, and I'm as strong a supporter of reform as they come.

It is critical, in my opinion, to find another way to choose the candidates that make up the numbers in an MMP type system

- My favourite option would be to simply take the 'best seconds,' so that if, for example, the NDP was due 5 additional seats under MMP than what it was awarded under the old FPTP system, instead of having the 5 NDP candidates pulled from a list made by NDP party members/leaders, we would simply take the 5 NDP candidates who got the highest percentage of the vote in their riding without being elected under FPTP.

The primary advantage here is that it removes the party list from the equation.

Secondary advantages are that it requires very little modification from the current system and that it is simple, easy to understand, and seems like a fair way to go about things.

The one drawback I see is the notion that some ridings may get more MP's than others, but I think this could be mitigated a bit, and is outweighed by the positives. I imagine the electoral reform experts out there could offer more possible solutions to this dilemma.

8) Reformers need to work as closely as possible with all political parties, and indeed should join parties and try to change them from the inside as well. Situations like the one in 2005 where the B.C. Green Party decided to commit suicide by not supporting reform should be avoided where possible. Parties on a growth curve and likely to have to battle against FPTP's biases could be a particular focus of outreach (e.g. the B.C. Conservative Party)

9) On the communications front, I think that reformers can do more with electronic media. The referendums have proven that the mainstream media is implacably opposed to reform but that media is dying. In the 2005 B.C. referendum I tracked the opinions of bloggers on reform, and, as you might expect given that the more youthful, urban and informed people are the more likely they are to support reform, the bloggers who offered an opinion were overwhelmingly in favour (by a margin of 57-15, i.e. 79% support).

The ideal situation would be for there to be a 'Michael Geist' of electoral reform. i.e. A blogger supporting electoral reform, that focusses on Canada and is written by someone who is respected, tireless, intelligent, read by many, candid, politically savvy, and influential. No, I don't have anyone in mind, but I think that having someone (ideally a few someones) who can serve as a go-to place for information and tactics on supporting reform as well as serving as a focussing device for directing the support of all the reformers out there can be very effective, as Geist has shown.

Of course, there is no point in giving up on the MSM, as even though they are dying, they are still pretty powerful and the people they do reach tend to be the ones who vote. Meetings with editorial boards, consistent letter writing, both 'to the editor' and directly to columnists on the political beat are probably still effective tools in the battle for public opinion.

10) Still on communications, there is a need for consistent framing and messaging as well. You might notice that I almost never refer to our current outdated, outmoded, archaic, antique electoral system without inserting an adjective suggesting that it is past its best-before date. There's probably more scope for this sort of thing, both negative terms for the current system and those who support it, and motherhood-esque terms for reforms and those who support them (sadly, 'pro-choice' is taken - Americans are the experts at this sort of thing and are likely the best source of ideas in this area).

11) One last point on communication, the development of clear visuals, phrases, youtube videos, etc. that drive home key points of the reform message and counteract some of the concerns people have, should be a priority.

For example, in B.C. the videos that explain STV are useful tools in both informing voters and in fighting the notion that STV is 'too complex'.

Another example of a useful graphic might be one showing a map of the world over time, with the various parts of the world changing to some friendly colour as countries around the world adopt various forms of proportional representation (perhaps with titles for major reforms such as the switch to MMP in Germany and New Zealand, the adoption of PR in Wales, Scotland, Norther Ireland, etc.)

This would serve to counter the idea I feel many people have that our current system is 'normal' and that any proposed reform is some sort of aberration that has never been tried before.

It would also help to create an air of inevitability around the notion of reform which is also helpful, in my opinion.

12) Supporters of reform need to get behind whatever reform is offerred rather than quarreling amongst themselves or letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Supporters of MMP in B.C. who voted against STV because they preferred MMP are stuck with FPTP for the foreseeable future.

One way to avoid this problem is to follow the New Zealand example of first having a referendum to decide which reform is best, and then voting on whether to implement it or not. You may still get some people opposing reform, but I think they are less likely to do so when they know their preferred option was defeated in a referendum, as opposed to having been excluded by a citizen's assembly process or by some internal political party policy development process.


I'll end this rambling post on a point of optimism for the future of reform. As I mentioned earlier, the results in B.C. and Ontario both showed the highest support for reform in the most urban ridings which also tend to be the youngest ridings. This suggests that support may rise naturally over time as the population becomes more urban and as the opponents of reform die off. There is a common expression that science 'advances funeral by funeral' and it might be the same sort of long term battle that is required to get electoral reform adopted in Canada.

B.C. Election 2009

B.C. will be having an election on May 12, 2009, 8 days from now.

If you want more info on the parties, their platforms, the polls, etc. I recommend Sacha's excellent site.

Personally, I'm not too enthusiastic about this particular election. The Liberal (in name only) party has been in charge for 8 years and although they've moderated some of their more unpleasant views (on aboriginal relations and the environment for example) and they have certainly accomplished a fair bit in terms of infrastructure (albeit by committing the province to a large stream of payments over the next 25 years or so), I'd certainly be happy to see them removed from power.

Under their watch B.C. has seen some of the fastest rising inequality and poverty levels in Canada, and has failed to take care of all of its citizens. Furthermore, the Liberals seem increasingly corrupt and willing to sell off the province's resources to their friends and party insiders and to big business.

Given the huge housing and construction bubble, the perilously low savings rates and the rising inequality, B.C. can be expected to be hammered extra hard by the economic downturn - if the Liberals do win this one, they may get to reap some of what they've sown.

The only alternative likely to be elected is the NDP party. The NDP platform has some good ideas, such as raising the minimum wage and ending/taxing the flaring of natural gas. Still, I can't bring myself to vote for a party that is campaigning on increasing the province's carbon emissions and contributing *more* to one of the greatest threats that mankind currently faces. It is funny in a way that so many people viewed the revenue neutral carbon tax as a tax increase, but even though repealing it will produce just as many losers as putting it in did, you don't hear, for example, residents of downtown Vancouver up in arms about the tax/debt increase they'll have to face due to repeal of the carbon tax that currently benefits them.

The other killers in the NDP platform are the promises to lower hydro bills (again, a move that will increase emissions) and to kill the plan for smart meters. After all, peak oil is another huge threat to our future, so obviously we should cancel plans to modernize our electrical grid and give ourselves a greater capacity to make efficient use of our electricity resources.

It's a great plan really, cancel plans for new electricity production, lower prices to encourage more consumption and kill measures designed to encourage conservation. I don't see any problems with that agenda at all.

Whoever wins will deserve what they get trying to govern this province from 2009 - 2013 (Olympic perks and a whole lot of economic headaches, I predict).

So yeah, I think I'll vote Green. I thought I might vote for the Marijuana party, since legalizing marijuana is one of the most positive changes that could be made by our politicians, but I see that they are endorsing the Greens rather than running their own candidates.

The main thing that will bring me to the polls is the chance to again vote in favour of scrapping our antiquated electoral system and replacing it with one that can actually function in a province with more than 2 political parties - STV. But more on that in another post perhaps - or just visit the blog I wrote back in 2005 the first time we voted on electoral reform. Maybe if we can fix the electoral system we'll have more palatable choices when the next election comes around.

Sphere of Deviance

Via Atrios, an interesting piece by Jay Rosen at Pressthink on the role of the media in defining the boundaries of accepted, acceptable and unacceptable debate, and how the internet erodes the control of the media by allowing individual citizens and groups to connect directly rather than being passive receivers of the mainstream media.

With the provincial election coming up in May, and another referendum on changing our electoral system from the obsolete first past the post system to the single transferable vote system proposed by the Citizens Assembly, it made me think about the role the media plays in the debate on electoral reform.

One of the things I've always been unable to understand is just why the media is so opposed to electoral reform. In fact, one of the first posts on this blog (back in 2004!) concluded by asking, "What is it about PR [proportional representation] that leads columnists to write such absurd things? What are they afraid of?"

The reason I asked was because despite being opposed to electoral reform, most of the folks in the media seemed unable to put together a coherent explanation for *why* they were opposed, seeming to come to a conclusion first and then go looking for supporting arguments, much in the way of drunkards and lampposts.

Some of the journalists /columnists who oppose reform, Bill Tieleman comes to mind, are simply partisans who feel the reform will hurt their party and argue accordingly, but many of them seem to just have some instinctive reaction to defend the status quo.

After reading Jay's piece, I can see how in some ways that [defending the status quo, or the views of the establishment], is one of the most important functions the media has, but they're not aware of it so they do it instinctively, without even realizing what they're doing or why. I don't know if this insight can help the STV (Single Transferrable Vote) proposal get less hostile media coverage this time around, but maybe the greater strength of the internet (where support for reform is high) vs. the media now vs. 4 years ago will help shape the debate in terms more favourably towards reform.

This and That

First of all, Harper explains how our system of government works:






Secondly, James Bow explains how the first past the post electoral system is tearing our country apart by fostering regional parties and exaggerating what regional differences exist.





Finally, Paul Willcocks explains how the B.C. Liberal party first lied about being opposed to gambling and is now lying about receiving donations from the gambling industry.

Speaking of gambling, if we accept that our impending financial woes are driven by too much debt and too much consumer spending, not enough saving, and too many people living on the edge financially, then it seems clear that the massive expansion of government sanctioned gambling has likely played in role in bringing us the trouble that now approaches.

Tell 'Em Ed

Ed Broadbent makes the case for updating our archaic election system.

Electoral Reform Plan to be Tabled

From the green party website I see that B.C. Green Party leader Adriane Carr met with Premier Gordon Campbell who reportedly said that

"he will be publicly tabling a plan in late August or early September of this year to pursue electoral reform."

Sounds good to me - it will be interesting to see what he comes up with - hopefully something which acknowledges that STV got a much higher percentage of votes than he or his majority government Liberal party did in the last election.

I Want My Own Lobbyists

Jay Currie has a good post up at BlogsCanada on the introduction of Bill C-60, which is officially titled, 'An Act To Give More Rights To The Recording Industry At The Expense Of Giving Citizens Of Canada Fewer Rights While At The Same Time Trying Not To Step On The Toes Of Powerful Internet Service Providers'. OK, technically it is titled, 'An Act To Amend the Copyright Act' but I think my title gives more insight into the bill.

I won't get into all the details of the legislation here (if you want the details your best bet is to read Michael Geist (holder of the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-Commerce Law) who's been following this as closely as anyone) but the general impression I'm getting so far is that, while more balanced than the U.S. legislation in this area, the new laws are basically there to protect business from the effects of new technology by making many of the uses of this technology illegal (or making it illegal to circumvent limitations deliberately built into technology to make it less functional). For example, from Geist,

"Therefore, Canadians may be asked to pay several times for the same work as they may pay once for the CD, once for the digital download, and once through the private copying levy for the blank CD. Attempts to circumvent protections on the CD in order to make a personal copy (a copy already paid for via the levy) will now constitute infringement in Canada."

It doesn't seem like a wise approach, or one which was crafted with my interests (as a citizen of Canada) in mind.

Stepping back from the actual legislation (which we can at least hope doesn't pass before parliament is dissolved and we head to another election), I was struck by this line from Geist,

"There is simply no denying that the lobbying efforts of the copyright owners, particularly the music industry, have paid off as they are the big winners in this bill."

This, I think is the root of the problem. The battle over copyright involves balancing the interests of artists, the industry of copyright holders, communications companies (such as ISPs) and individual citizens. Everyone on that list has lobbyists working the government to get their side a good deal - everyone except for the citizens. In theory, of course, the Members of Parliament themselves are supposed to be lobbyists for the citizens of Canada, but in practice, it seems that MP's have trouble remembering that this is supposed to be their role, especially when it comes to issues in which there is not a big public interest factor (i.e. over 99% of all issues).

What we need are citizen lobbyists who can keep getting in MP's face and reminding them whose interest they were elected to serve. Blogs are a decent start, and indeed when Geist is listing the 'reactions' to the bill, his only source for reactions of 'individual Canadians' is to mention blogs. But I don't think blogs are good enough - we need someone who will stack panels for presentations to MP's, someone who can finance user-friendly studies and reports, someone who can get MP's on the phone or go to lunch at a nice Ottawa restaurant and bend their ear a little bit. We need people with media clout who can get fawning coverage of their every word and make well publicized (even if poorly substantiated) claims about the needs for better protection for citizens. In short, we need our own lobbyists to take on the industry lobbyists.

So here's my proposal. For the next election we should get two ballots. One will be the standard ballot for electing MP's and the second will be the lobbyist ballot. The lobbyists will be elected by some sort of proportional representation and people will be able to vote for lobbyists to represent citizen interests on the issues that are important to them. People concerned about digital rights could vote for a digital rights lobbyist, people worried about health care could vote for a health lobbyist and so on. With luck this would ensure the election of a broad cross-section of lobbyists to represent the public. The number of lobbyists elected would have to be calibrated to the number of lobbyists other interest groups have working for them - I'm sure we could work out a formula. The lobbyists would have to be well paid to avoid the incentive for them to be bought off by private interests, but I'm guessing that the refreshing feeling of working for, rather than against the public interest for once would compensate for a somewhat lower salary than industry lobbyists get. A salary (and benefits) similar to what MP's get now should be sufficient.

OK, I know what you're thinking: if the current group of people we elect to parliament fails to consistently represent our interests, why should this second group be any different? But MP's are charged with the job of drafting legislation, which is a tricky business and requires a balancing of many interests. Since they are already considering various interests, it is relatively easy to tip them towards considering the distant public a little less and the up close and personal industry group a little more. But LP's (Lobbyists of Parliament) wouldn't have to give any weight to the interests of other groups at all. Just like an industry lobbyist they would only care about their clients (the general public) and everybody else be damned.

Who's with me?

Why Do the Conservatives Hate Democracy?

Via, Sinister Thoughts, it seems like the Conservative party is blocking any progress on electoral reform in the Federal government. I guess they must still be hoping that they can get 35-40% of the votes in a future election and form a majority government. As Greg says,

"The question is, why are the Conservatives, who see threats to democracy everywhere, blocking attempts to improve our democracy?"

Update: From the comments at Greg's post I see that perhaps the Conservatives are just blocking all government business regardless of what it is. My title was meant to be humorous (see my explanation in the comments) but if they keep this up, I'll have to start wondering if the Conservatives, perhaps don't hate, but have a certain contempt for our democracy. (Certainly the Liberals have shown their share of contempt for our democracy as well recently, but two wrongs don't make a right in my book).

STV Referendum Post (not-so) Mortem

Where do we go from here?
The battle's done,
And we kind of won
So we sound our victory cheer

Where do we go from here?
Why is the path unclear?¹

After thinking it over for a couple of days, I have to say I'm pretty positive about the outcome of the referendum on Tuesday. True, STV getting 60% and passing would have been ideal, but I think when you consider that 60% is a pretty high bar to begin with, it was always going to be tough to reach that level, especially when trying to explain a complicated system like STV to the entire population - especially with no real budget for educating the voters and in competition with an election going on simultaneously.

Another complicating factor was that the process was designed so that elections BC would design the electoral boundaries only after the referendum. This allowed people to rightfully ask how they could vote on an electoral system when they wouldn't even know how it would affect the riding they would vote in.

A final factor was that, undeniably, some of the people who argued and voted against STV did so not because they preferred the current system to STV but because they wanted to have a chance to vote for a third system, the Mixed Member Proportional system, which was the second choice of the Citizen's Assembly. One of the reasons the Citizen's Assembly did not choose STV was that they were constrained by their mandate to not increase the number of MLA's elected in B.C., an arbitrary and unnecessary restriction.

So the real question now is, what next? The rule of 60%, while I think it is overly high² was set before hand so it would not be right for the government to take the 57.39% Yes vote and treat it as close enough and go ahead with STV. But on the other hand, given the 57-43 vote in favour, as well as the fact that a majority voted in favour of STV in 77 of the province's 79 ridings, clearly the population of B.C. has an interest in reforming the electoral system.

Under the circumstances, the course I recommend to the B.C. government would be as follows.

1) The Assembly should be reconvened, freed from the no new MLA's restriction and allowed to present two complete systems.
2) Elections BC should be directed to draw up suitable electoral boundaries and voting rules for each of the proposed systems so that voters would know exactly what they are voting on.
3) There should be a second referendum which would allow voters a choice between the 2 systems recommended.
4) This referendum should be held on its own without being linked to another election going on simultaneously.
5) Funding should be provided to mount a campaign for both options presented as well as a 'No' campaign.
6) The ballot should ask voters two questions: The first would be: 'Which of the two electoral options presented do you prefer?' ('Neither' would be an option here). The second would be 'Do you believe B.C. should change it's electoral system to whichever of the options in question 1 gets the most votes? Possible answers would be, "No", "Yes", "Yes, but only if the preferred system is option 1", and "Yes but only if the preferred system is option 2"

Then whichever system got more votes in question 1 would have to get 50% Yes (or at most 55%) on question 2 (adding up the unconditional 'yes' votes and the 'yes' votes conditional on that system being chosen).

There's probably a simpler way to accomplish this (I'm no political scientist), but you get my point. Given the expressed desire for change among B.C. voters, they should be given a second chance to vote for electoral change, in a properly funded referendum, one which gives citizens a choice between the two systems which have a strong base of support in the province.
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Note: Rafe Mair articulately makes some similar points to mine over at the Tyee.

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¹ From the song "Where Do We Go From Here", from the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Season 6, Episode 7).

² See Wikipedia for some interesting history on referendums. Following from there to the article on Canadian referendums it seems we've only ever had 3 (at the federal level): One on prohibition, one on conscription and one for the Charlottetown Accord. So in the history of the federal government only 3 questions have been deemed to be of enough significance to warrant having a referendum at all. And *no* question was ever been deemed important enough to require a super-majority from a referendum vote, not even the government forcing the nation's youth to fight and possibly die in a foreign country or changing the nation's constitution.

Similar commentary from a "Yes" campaign press release:

- No other province, or country we know of requires such a high threshold for approving a referendum on electoral reform.

- PEI's referendum on electoral reform requires a simple majority.

- New Zealand's referendum on electoral reform passed with 54%.

- The two Irish referendums to replace STV with First Past the Post used a simple majority

- The BC Referendum Act stipulates a simple majority for any other referendum.

- The recent BC Referendums on Aboriginal Issues, and on Initiative and Recall all passed based on a simple majority of votes

- No former BC referendum has ever required more than a simple majority.

- The two referendums on Quebec separation required a simple majority

- The Charlottetown Accord referendum concerned very significant constitutional issues, yet required no more than a simple majority.

- Nearly all governments in British Columbia are themselves elected with considerably less than 50% support.

B.C. Election / Referendum

Well, I wasn't too optimistic about my predictions for the B.C. election and that lack of optimism turned out to be well justified. There's still some close ridings but it looks like the NDP will win 30+ seats (out of 79), a far cry from the 22 I predicted. I remember when I first moved to B.C. it was in the summer of 2001, a couple of months after the last election and to hear people talk, they were never going to vote NDP again. I think in some ways B.C. voters have shorter memories than the Ontario voters I am more used to (or less inertia perhaps).

At any rate, my prediction for the popular vote for the Liberals (predicted 47, so far 46), and Other (predicted 4, so far 4) were pretty good, but what I missed was how the left-wing vote would consolidate in order to try and elect some NDP members to balance out the legislature. Where I predicted 38% for the NDP and 11% Green, the results so far are 41% NDP, and 9% Green. These don't seem like big differences but they make for a big change in the seat distribution with the left wing vote not splitting enough to allow the Liberals to sneak through in a number of ridings. I guess in some ways this is just our old First-Past-the-Post electoral system at work, pushing us towards a polarized two party system since a third party inevitably splits the vote on either the left or the right.

The result in terms of seats will be a big improvement over the previous government (which was 77 Liberals, 2 NDP), but I still think the nearly 1 in 10 voters who supported the Green Party deserve some representation as do NDP supporters in predominantly Liberal areas (and vice-versa).

Speaking of the electoral system, so far (as at 11:20 pdt) the referendum on STV (Single Transferable Vote) is 56% Yes and 44% No. It may not end up meeting the threshold of 60% set by the Liberals, but it is far *far* from an endorsement of the status quo. I guess if STV doesn't make it up to 60%, it will be up to the people of B.C. to keep the issue of electoral reform alive. Given that a majority of the province expressed their lack of satisfaction with the current system tonight, it is the only thing to do.

Ringing Endorsement

I see that the Brits had an election yesterday. With most of the results in it looks like (roughly) 36 out of 100 voters voted for Tony Blair's incumbent Labour party, 33 voters out of 100 voted for the Conservatives, 22 out of 100 voted for the Liberal Democrats and 9 out of 100 voted for other parties / independents.

Naturally the logical outcome of such a vote is a Labour majority government (56% of the seats so far) with 64 voters out of 100 left completely powerless. Gotta love that First Past the Post electoral system.


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Update: I forgot to mention that Greg at Sinister Thoughts was way ahead of me on this one.

Deconstructing the 'Vote No to STV' arguments

Note: I wrote this post for my 'Vote Yes to STV' blog which recommends that B.C. voters vote in favour of changing the provincial electoral system to STV on May 17, but it ended up being so long that I figured I'd post it here too, in the hopes of increasing the probability that at least one person makes it through to the end (you've been warned).

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A website has been setup for a Vote No campaign against STV. The url and the title on the site read 'Know STV'. I guess 'know' is the obvious pun to go with for a vote no campaign, but I find it a bit odd since, in my opinion, the biggest hope of 'no' supporters is that people won't 'know' much about STV.

Consider what happens when people 'know' a lot: The members of the Citizens Assembly studied electoral systems for over a year and at the end, they voted 146-7 that STV is better than the current system. The Law Commission of Canada did a study and concluded that just about anything was better than First Past the Post (the current system) including STV (they recommended MMP as the best choice).

The truth is that pretty much any time any group has seriously studied electoral systems they have concluded that both STV and MMP are better than First Past the Post.

So maybe it's not surprising that, on a site whose avowed mission is to help people 'know' about STV, there is no section which actually explains what STV is, nor is there a link to any of the many animations which are probably the best online resource for understanding how STV works (I like the Australian one the best) - but they do have almost 1000 words in their section on the biographies of the Know STV backers. Seems like they want you to know 'know STV' more than they want you to know STV, if you know what I mean.

Now, it's true, the site does have a long Q&A section but this is more of a forum for them to give answers to softball questions than it is a place to get clear answers to help you 'know' what STV is.

For example, the first question is, "What is the Single-Transferable Vote (STV) proposed by the Citizens Assembly as BC's new electoral system?" - which sounds promising right?

But the answer given is, "The Single-Transferable Vote (STV) is an alternative to the First Past The Post electoral system"

Wow, that really clears it up, thanks! The rest of the answer is devoted to a comparison of the usage rates of STV and First Past the Post around the world which is interesting, but not what was asked (I always find it annoying when someone is asked something and they hijack the question - but when it's their own friggin' question you really have to wonder).

They do go into more detail about how STV works in their next question, "How does the Single-Transferable Vote (STV) differ from our current electoral system?" but rather than explain it clearly they make a few misleading statements and send the reader off to the Citizen's Assembly website for a full explanation.

Since I brought it up, here are some of the misleading statements:

"BC currently has 79 different constituencies but under STV there could be as few as18 constituencies or less. Each larger constituency would have from two or three members in rural areas to as many as seven MLAs in larger urban areas."

Aside from the confusing, bad writing, ('as few as18 or less'?) this paragraph could give the impression that there will be fewer MLA's elected under STV when in fact the number of MLA's elected (79) will remain the same.

The next line is, "Voters would rank all candidates in that larger constituency by their personal preference" which is simply not true. Voters could rank just one candidate or they could rank as many as they want. There is little point for most voters in ranking more than a few candidates and it is highly likely that the number of voters who decide to rank *all* the candidates would be extremely small. I know I have no plans to.

At any rate, I invite anyone to spend some time here on my blog and try to learn more about STV, (hint: click on the 'What the heck is STV' link) and then go to the Know STV site and see which one helps you learn more about how STV works.

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All right, enough about how the Know STV folks don't really want you to know all that much about STV or electoral systems in general, let's take a more detailed look at their Q&A and correct some of the areas where it lacks a little in the 'fair and balanced' department.

First question: "What is the Single-Transferable Vote (STV) proposed by the Citizens Assembly as BC's new electoral system?"

I already talked about how they don't answer the question, but let's look at the question they did answer which is, "Which jurisdictions use STV and which ones use First Past the Post?"

Their answer, which is that first past the post is used in a lot more places than STV, is accurate but it misses an important aspect which is the trend. And the trend is that countries are abandoning our First Past the Post system in favour of more proportional systems. In New Zealand, they adopted the Mixed Member Proportional System. In Australia, we are seeing the gradual spread of STV (most recently adopted in the State of Victoria.

The European parliament has members elected from countries all across Europe. If you take a look at the linked map, you can see that while only 2 European countries use STV to elect their members, that is greater than the number (0) which use First Past the Post. Even England, the country which spread First Past the Post to so much of the world, no longer uses it for the European Parliament elections. Similarly, none of the recently set-up parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland use First Past the Post (Scotland and Wales use MMP and Northern Ireland uses STV).

The fact that so many more countries use First Past the Post than STV is more of a historical artifact than a ringing endorsement of First Past the Post.


Q: "So how does our current First Past the Post electoral system work by comparison?"

A: "Under First Past the Post, each voter chooses one candidate to represent their constituency and the candidate who wins more votes than any other is elected.

Each FPTP constituency has one MLA who is personally accountable to those voters and the constituencies are much smaller both geographically and in terms of the number of voters in each one."

So after reading this answer would you get the impression that there is exactly the same number of voters per MLA under STV as there is under the current system? If not, then you've been misled. Another good question to ask voters might be how personally accountable they feel their MLA is currently. Especially when in many cases over half the voters voted against that MLA (which wouldn't be the case under STV). And when most of the people who did vote for the MLA were probably voting for the Party the MLA represented and if they wanted to support their party they only had one choice of who to vote for (unlike under STV).

OK, next question.

Q: "Isn't STV a lot more complicated than FPTP?"

AKA, 'How often does STV beat its wife?'

A: "Yes. One of FPTP's biggest advantages is the simplicity and ease of understanding it brings to all voters. In recent New Zealand local elections using STV for the first time 11% of all votes were disqualified, more than 14 times the number rejected in the previous election."

Of course, if they had done their homework, they may have run across this quote from the Citizen's Assembly website:

"Does changing the voting system lead to more spoiled ballots?
A change in voting system or ballot form does not have a large impact on spoiled ballots. For example, when elections for the parliament of Tasmania switched from First Past The Post (FPTP - our current electoral system) to STV (the recommended system) the rate of spoiled ballots was 1.2% in 1906 (under FPTP) and 2.9% in 1909 (under STV). Another example of this marginal impact is when the House of Representatives in Australia went from marking crosses on the ballot to listing numbers, the rate of spoiled ballots changed 1.2%.

You may have heard that New Zealand had a problem with counting STV votes in its Fall 2004 municipal elections. That was a problem with its computers, not with the STV system. The Assembly has designed BC-STV so the count can be done either by hand or by computer."

oops.

Anyway, the answer continues:

"Voters may also be faced with a very large ballot and dozens of candidates in larger ridings, making it hard to rank the candidates knowledgeably."

OK, imagine someone said this to you,

"Shoppers may be faced with a lot of different cereals making it hard to choose a cereal knowledgeably"

Let's face it, any trip to the store involves choosing between a multitude of various models of just about everything, and I think if people can manage this they can manage to pick out their favourite candidate (or someone from their favourite party) out of a long list. And if the success of big-box stores is any guide people prefer more choices not fewer. Shocking, I know.

The answer gets better,

"Voters will also be confused by a mathematical quota called the Weighted Inclusive Gregory System which determines how and where exactly their vote will be 'transferred' to, by having to rank a large number of candidates in each constituency and by the need to trust computers to get the results right."

You hear that voters, you *will* be confused (whether you like it or not!). Of course, if you let the 'know STV' folks get to you with their scary sounding mathematical formula I guess it's possible. But someone who really wanted you to 'know' STV might take this opportunity to explain just how your vote will be transferred (it's not that scary):

If the person you put #1 gets more votes than what they need to get elected, part of your vote gets transferred to your #2. How big a part? Well if your #1 got so many votes he/she only needed half of them to get elected, then they only get half your vote and the other half is transferred to #2. If they got so many votes they only needed 1/3 of their votes than they only get 1/3 of your vote and 2/3 is transferred to your #2 choice.

The other way your vote can get transferred is if nobody has enough votes to get elected, in which case they eliminate the poor sap who has the fewest #1 votes. If that poor sap was your #1 choice, then your vote (rather than being wasted like under the current system) is transferred to your #2 choice.

The same rules apply to your #2 choice as well so it's possible part or all of your vote could end up getting transferred to your #3 choice as well. (e.g. You vote for an independent with your #1, but they get eliminated and your vote is transferred to your #2 who is from the Green Party, but they get eliminated as well, so your vote is transferred to your #3 choice, and helps an NDP candidate edge out a Liberal candidate.)

OK, where was I, right, next question:

Q: "Will STV increase or reduce local representation and accountability?"

Before I get to the answer, I should mention the extensive section of (7!) links that the 'know STV' site has. One of these 7 lucky links is the "The Single Transferable Vote in practice", a report undertaken on behalf of the Scottish government (before they adopted STV for use in local elections).

Here's a quote from criticisms of how STV works in practice in Ireland:

"the heavy emphasis on constituency casework, faction-fighting between candidates from the same party, a focus on constituency, localist matters in election campaigns and parliamentary work, 'friends and neighbours' voting, are all seen as resulting - at least in large part - from the candidate-centred, preference voting of STV"

Yes, a frequent criticism of STV is that because candidates have to compete with members of their own party for seats, they focus too much on local issues and local representation at the expense of 'big-picture' thinking.

The Scottish report eventually concludes that it is hard to tell whether the intense focus on local issues is a function of the electoral system or just some quirk of the Irish in general (or possibly due to the fact that they only have national government with no provincial or local governments).

Anyway, what do the 'Know STV' folks say about STV and local representation?

"There will be less local representation and accountability because STV will mean much larger constituencies and MLAs will be representing far more people over a wider geographic area."

Once again, may I point out that the number of voters per MLA will be the same under STV as it is now. So MLA's will be representing the same number of people as before. It's just that instead of having (for example) 4 ridings each with it's own MLA, you would now have them combined into one riding with 4 MLA's. So maybe the MLA's will have to figure out how to divide up the riding between them - an insurmountable challenge? I doubt it. Personally I'd rather have four MLA's to potentially go to with a problem - including one that I voted for, vs. having only one choice and that being someone I voted against because I couldn't stand them, but that's just me.

They continue, "In large rural constituencies that contain a major town, it’s possible that all MLAs elected will come from that town because that’s where the most voters are, reducing accountability for other parts of the constituency."

Let me see if I can explain this. If an area was large enough to be a riding under the current system, then that means it has enough population to elect someone to represent them that is from their area - if that's what they want (and if they make the effort to get off the couch and go vote). This might be a good time to point out how under the current system parties can bring in candidates who don't even live in the riding at all (the recent election of John Tory in a by-election in Ontario is a good example of this) and people have no choice if they want to support their party. Under STV people could choose the representative from their party from their local area. Here's another quote from the Scottish report:

"Moreover studies of Irish voting patterns also indicate that candidates from a local area will receive more votes from that part of the constituency in which they live (Farrell 2001). Accordingly Irish political parties have developed sophisticated vote management and election strategies. These tend to involve ensuring that:
candidates are picked from different corners of the constituency and voters in each locale are actively encouraged to vary the ordering of their preferences so as to maximize the efficiency of the party vote. The basic idea is that the more equal the spread of first preferences across the different party candidates, the greater chance that more will be elected (Farrell 2001, p.146)."

But wait, Ireland and B.C. aren't the same, next question:

Q: "STV supporters say local representation is very good in Ireland under STV. What's the difference with BC?"

A: "BC and Ireland are quite different geographically, with BC many times larger. However Ireland's population is very close to BC's 4 million people and they have 166 representatives in their parliament, called the Dail, while in BC we have just 79 MLAs in the B.C. Legislature."

This is of course true, but it's just as true under our current system as it would be under STV. If we need more MLA's to represent us, we should have more MLA's. If we're short on MLA's that doesn't have much bearing on a comparison between two systems, both of which have the same number of MLA's.

They continue,

"Inevitably with huge ridings and few MLAs parts of BC would likely lose local representation. In some areas it is possible that no local candidate would be elected as an MLA, removing local representation completely."

'huge ridings and few MLAs?' Did I mention that there will be the same number of MLA's under STV, yeah I think I did.

Let's face it, this whole long list of concerns about local representation comes down to a worry that MLA's may be distributed slightly more unevenly around the province than they are now. Even though this will be left pretty much entirely in the hands of voters to decide for themselves. And there is no mention of how the fact that MLA's will have to worry about being defeated by members of their own party will force them to be more attentive to local needs. Or how the absence of safe Liberal or NDP seats like under the current system will mean that people will have to get elected based on their personal reputation for getting things done vs. which party they are running for.

OK, next question.

Q: "Does STV give proportional results? That is, if a party gets 10% of the popular vote in B.C. would it win 10% of the seats?

A: "No. STV supporters say it is more proportional than FPTP but there is no guarantee that seats won will correspond with popular vote. Proportional representation electoral systems such as List PR are designed to ensure such proportionality, not STV.

If a party got 10% of the vote under STV it would be unlikely to win a seat in any constituency in BC. Look again at the example of a constituency of 100,000 voters electing three members: the number of votes needed to win is 25,001, which means that a party would need at least 25% support to win one seat of the three."

Never mind for a moment that the Green party got 12% of the vote in the last election under First Past the Post, got 0 seats, and in all likelihood *would* have elected members under STV, instead how about we ask a different question:

Q: Is STV far more proportional than our current system and has this been clearly proven time after time in elections around the world and is the proportionality of STV much closer to being perfectly proportional than it is to matching our current system?

A: Yes. OK, let's move on.

Q: "Are MLAs elected with equal levels of support under STV?"

A: "No. Proponents say because STV it is more proportional "overall" if is a fairer system. But a candidate in a two-member riding in northern BC can get elected with 33% public support while a Vancouver or other large urban centre candidate can get elected with just 13% of the votes cast.

This means some MLAs have had to win far more support than others to be elected to the BC Legislature."

OK, Time for a math lesson. The candidate in the rural riding is getting a larger percentage of a riding with fewer voters. The candidate in the urban riding is getting a smaller percentage of votes in a riding with more voters. Can we see how these factors balance each other out so the two candidates need roughly the same number of total votes to get elected.

Now it's true that there is a slight difference. Say we assume 10,000 voters per riding then in a 2 member rural riding, a candidate would need 1/3 of 20,000 (10,000 each for the 2 members) votes = 6,700 votes to get elected. In a 7 member urban riding, a candidate would need, 1/8 of 70,000 = 8,750 votes. Of course a quick look at the last election results will show that the riding of Victoria-Hillside was won with 7,878 votes while the riding of Fort Langley Aldergrove was won with 16,527 votes. And this kind of disparity, far larger than the biggest possible difference under STV, is par for the course for First Past the Post (sorry about the mixed sporting metaphors).

I'm not even really sure what this question is getting at, but if MLA's getting elected with an equal number of voters actually is important, than we should point out that STV is far superior to our current system once again in this area.

Are you starting to notice a pattern yet? When the Know-STV folks feel that First-Past-the-Post has an advantage, they go for a direct comparison of the two systems. But when they think ('know') that STV is superior, they compare STV to some ideal standard like perfect proportionality or MLA's being elected with exactly the same number of votes each. Also note how rarely they are willing to take on a direct comparison - what does that tell you?

OK, next question.

Q: "Does STV allow independent candidates to win seats?"

A: "Not necessarily. Malta has used STV since 1921 but since 1950 not a single independent candidate has been elected. Any candidate requires significant funding to win election and with STV the constituencies will be much bigger, forcing candidates to raise even more money. In a seven-member constituency as proposed for Vancouver, major parties will likely spend $1 million or more in that constituency campaign alone — an amount no independent candidate could possibly raise."

First off, this answer is simply factually inaccurate. Yes, STV *necessarily* *allows* independent candidates to win seats. Even our old First Past the Post system *allows* independents to win seats. More substantively, the Know-STV folks yet again seem to be confused about STV. A 7 member constituency would indeed be much bigger, but there are 7 seats, so an independent only needs to get 1/7 of the votes (technically 1/8th since only 7 people can get more than 1/8 of a total). The parties aren't going to spend any more money *per MLA* than they do right now and an independent won't have to either.

Let me explain why STV is better for independents, something which pretty much everybody (even most STV opponents acknowledge) but which the 'Know-STV' people apparently don't want you to, you know, know.

Under the old system, the only way for an independent candidate to get elected is to win a plurality (get more votes than anyone else) in a specific riding. Under STV, an independent candidate who gets that many votes in one riding will still (with a very high probability) get elected. But in addition, an independent candidate can get a smaller level of support, spread over a wider area. For example, an independent candidate who gets an average of 15% support across one of the big Vancouver ridings would be able to get elected under STV, but would have been shut out under the old system (much like the Green Party was in the last election).

Furthermore, under the old system, many people don't vote for independents because they know the independent has no chance of being elected so they are wasting their vote (or worse by not strategically voting for their favourite party, they may help that party's opponent to get elected). But under STV, voters can vote for an independent knowing that if that candidate gets eliminated, then their vote will be transferred to their second choice, so they don't have to worry about wasted votes and strategic votes.

Next question.

Q: "Would smaller third parties be elected under an STV system?"

A: "Not necessarily. In Malta, which has had STV since 1921, there are only two parties with elected officials. In recent elections the largest third party has won less than 2% of the vote and no seats. In Ireland small parties have won seats but so have smaller parties in BC under First Past The Post, as recently as in 1996."

OK, this is getting tiresome. How about:

Q: Are smaller parties far more likely to be elected under STV than under our current system? A: Yes.

Seriously, if these folks really want you to make an informed choice why are they trying to deny even facts which are blindingly obvious to anyone who takes some time to think about how the two systems work (not to mention clearly documented by almost 100 years of electoral history). First Past the Post is so hostile to small parties that political scientists have formed a 'law', (Duvergers Law) which postulates that First Past the Post naturally leads to a two-party system.

It's simple, STV is more proportional so you need a smaller percentage of the vote to get elected plus it eliminates strategic voting - thus more small parties can be elected and this has been shown pretty clearly in practice. It's true that in Malta small parties don't get elected - because people don't vote for them - and this is a problem because?? OK, moving on.

Q: "Are women elected in larger numbers under STV?"

A: "No. In Malta women make up just 9.2% of the country's legislators, with only 6 women elected out of 65 representatives. In Ireland just 13.3% of elected officials are women."

I've already discuss this at length here, so I won't belabour it any further, but I'll just ask one more time, why, if the 'Know-STV' people want you to truly know STV, would they fail to mention that in the STV-using jurisdiction most similar to Canada (Australia), more women are elected than in B.C. Wouldn't that information be helpful to someone trying to make an informed decision?

Q: "Does STV mean an end to so-called 'wasted votes'"

All right, I'm just warning you, the 'Know-STV' folks really jumped the shark on this one, so this may get lengthy.

A: "If no vote were to be 'wasted' that would mean every voter's candidate of choice would have to win election - it's not possible or sensible."

Actually, it is entirely sensible and possible - in fact that's what proportional representation means. According to the Citizen's Assembly site:

"STV virtually eliminates 'wasted' votes. For example, in a three seat riding, even if a voter's #1 preferred candidate is not elected, there is a good chance her ballot will help her #2 and #3 preferred candidates win a seat. About 16% of ballots don't contribute to electing a candidate."

So STV doesn't eliminate wasted votes entirely like a pure proportional system would, but it reduces the % of wasted votes (from around 40-50% in a typical First Past the Post election) down to 16% - which is pretty good since it means one in four voters who would have someone in the legislature that they voted for under STV where they would have had noone under First-Past-the-Post.

They continue: "Elections are to select which candidate in each constituency has the most support"
Actually that's a definition of the First-Past-the-Post system not 'elections', but it's instructive to see that the Know-STV people think that the First-Past-the-Post method is equivalent to 'elections'.

"...and then which parties across the province have enough support from elected members to form a government.

STV supporters say that by ranking your choice of candidates, the odds are one of your choices will win a seat. But that's a little like saying if you bet on every horse in a horserace, one of your picks will be a winner."

Actually, it's not like that at all. Voters are expressing a preference between who they want to help win the race vs. who they want to lose, not trying to profit from every possible outcome - that's why the ranking is crucial. If you really want an analogy, it's more like saying that if your friends vote down your choice of a pizza with anchovies, egg and corn, you can still have a say in the decision between the vegetarian option and the pepperoni pizza rather than being shut out of the crucial decision because you wanted to be able to express your true preference first.

"And because of the complicated transfer system, you will never know where your vote actually went in electing the MLAs for your constituency."

Wrong again. If your first choice didn't get elected, it's a good bet that your vote got transferred to your second choice, unless the person you voted for was the last one to get eliminated. If your person was the last to get eliminated then your vote didn't get transferred at all. That's tough but console yourself by remembering that if we still used FPTP your vote would *never* get transferred.

Now, if your first choice did get elected, either they were the last one elected in your riding (in which case they got all of your vote and none was transferred) or they weren't the last one elected and they got part of your vote (enough to get elected) and the rest was transferred to your next choice. You can check the result to see how many votes your candidate got compared to how many they needed. The same calculation as before applies. If your candidate got twice as many votes as they needed then they got half your vote and half was transferred to your #2.

So the truth is, if you care to know, it will be easy enough to track where your vote went. It takes a bit more effort than under the current system where - unless you voted for the person who won - you might as well have put your ballot in the trash can as in the voting box, for all the effect it had on the election.

"Under First Past The Post, your vote goes to one candidate and is counted clearly. Regardless of your choice, that's not a wasted vote."

Seriously, why are they even bothering with this nonsense? If my vote had 0 impact on who get elected, it's a wasted vote, end of story. True, you could argue that no vote is wasted because it's important on principle to vote, but the 'know-stv' folks know as well as you and I do that that isn't what we're talking about when we talk about wasted votes. Sheesh.

Q: "What would happen to nominating meetings under an STV system?"

A: "Because STV combines the smaller single member constituencies of our current system into large multi-member constituencies, the likelihood is that special interest groups would dominate the nomination process of political parties even more than today."

Umm, why is that exactly - I'm not following. Wouldn't bigger ridings make it harder for special interests to dominate a nomination meeting. Isn't that logical - the smaller something is, the easier it is for a special interest to dominate it? I'm just asking.

OK, almost finished, I promise:

Q: "What is the short version of what's wrong with STV? Why should I vote no?"

A: "STV is complicated, confusing, prone to errors and delay, it reduces local accountability, increases the size of ridings, allows MLAs to avoid direct accountability for their decisions, increases party control and allows special interests to dominate party nominations."

So here's the big finish. STV is too complicated and confusing (translation BC voters aren't as smart as voters in Malta and Ireland and Tasmania who have been using STV since before the invention of commercial air travel, the automobile or television.)

It's prone to errors and delay (translation: Elections BC is incompetent and can't manage elections as well as the Irish or the Maltans)

It reduces local accountability (never mind that one of the most common criticisms of STV is that it makes MLA's focus too much on local concerns)

It increases the size of ridings (but not the number of voters per MLA - if this is such a big concern we could always just add more MLA's anyway)

It allows MLA's to avoid direct accountability for their decisions (how exactly? - and don't you think that MLA's are more accountable when voters know they can dump the MLA without voting for a different party?)

It increases party control (Actually, no. How much control parties want to have over their MLA's is up to the parties. - If anything, MLA's who go against the party have a better chance of surviving as independents under STV than they would under the old system).

and it allows special interests to dominate nomination meetings (not that there is any evidence of this ever happening anywhere, but the 'know STV' crew have decided that it's true so there you go. Personally I think logic suggests that larger meetings will be less corrupt but that's just me.)

So that's it. It's quite a long list of questions, but somehow they missed the obvious ones. Which system is more proportional? Which system doesn't require strategic voting? What % of Citizen's Assembly members thought STV was superior to First Past the Post? What happened in the two referendums where Irish voters were asked if they wanted to switch away from STV? Which system gives voters more choice? Yeah, I wonder why they didn't ask any of those questions.

Maybe because they didn't want you to 'know' the answers.

Time to Pack it In

After reading Norman Spector's latest comments on STV in the Vancouver Sun, I have come to the conclusion that it is (past) time for him to depart from the column writing business.

Let's start with the outright lie with which he concludes his column, saying that STV is "a voting system used by only one Commonwealth country"

The Sun should really publish a correction on this one, since clearly Australia and New Zealand are members of the Commonwealth and equally clearly both use STV for some elections (not to mention Scotland and Northern Ireland). I'm not sure why Spector feels that, on top of his pathetically transparent attempt to exclude Ireland (which uses STV) from discussion, he needs to lie outright as well.

But that's far from the only laughable part of this column. Now when you read the following line, "Proponents of STV claim that only politicians and political hacks favour the existing system", what do you expect is coming next?

I think you'd expect to be given an example of someone who favours the existing system, but isn't a politician or a political hack. But no, here's what comes next, "As I look at prominent names in the debate, however, I see the Bob Williams faction of the NDP -- represented by former cabinet minister Andrew Petter -- supporting STV. I see Moe Sihota -- representing the less ideological Dave Barrett wing -- opposing it. And I see a similar radical/moderate split on the right."

So you see, it isn't just politicians and political hacks who support the existing system, Moe Sihota, representing the less ideological Dave Barrett wing of the NDP, supports it too. And it's the same on the right!

It gets better. Spector's main point seems to be that, under STV, the Liberals wouldn't have decided to spend more money in the budget in the hopes of getting elected. He posits that, "STV would fragment our two big-tent, centrist parties and force politicians to compete for votes on the ends of the political spectrum." and that, "B.C. politics are not polarized. It's our society that's polarized -- along multiple fault lines. In fact, our political system is one of the few institutions that keep it all together." So you've got the argument right, having more than two parties would cause polarization - I don't agree, but at least it's a coherent point.

But further down, Norman backs his point up by saying that we don't want to become like Malta (which uses STV), since Malta is, "a country that's infamous for polarized politics." The thing is, Malta is also famous as the only jurisdiction which uses STV and which still has a two-party structure. So the infamously polarized Malta has a two party system, just like we do now, and Spector is basically contradicting his argument that a two-party system is the recipe for non-polarization.

There's more. Spector also claims that, "To date, proponents of the new voting system have been unwilling or unable to explain clearly where my vote and your votes would go after we mark our ballots."

Now the unwilling part is absurd. It is the Yes side which has a strong interest in explaining the STV system as well and as clearly as possible and a visit to any Yes-vote supporting site will reveal a strong emphasis on doing exactly that. For Yes supporters, ignorance (like Spector's) is our enemy.

As for the unable part, I doubt that Spector has conducted a poll, so one of two things must be true:

Either a) Spector has failed to understand how the vote counting will work - which makes the fact that he has written a number of columns criticizing the impact of the new system seem a little premature to say the least or

b) Spector understands it himself, but he is concerned for the little people in B.C. who don't have his intelligence to figure out this complicated system (which the Irish have been using since before WWII).

There's other nutty stuff as well, such as insinuating that STV will lead to a ban on abortion in one paragraph and then calling STV supporters an 'unholy alliance' (he seems to miss the irony) only a couple of paragraphs later.


Aside from all this, if Spector is going to comment on electoral reform, shouldn't he at least make a token effort to address all the flaws such as the lack of fairness and lack of power for voters which have driven us to consider dropping our current system? Or does he feel that if he keeps repeating his lie that 'only one country in the Commonwealth uses STV' like a mantra, then that is argument enough?

You put it all together and what you get is one of the most poorly written columns I've ever read, and one which the editors of the Sun should be embarrassed to have printed in their paper.

Blog Incest

Over at STV For BC - Vote Yes!, Declan* has a brilliant, thoughtful, insightful post about the interaction between electoral systems and the number of women elected - posted in response to Bill Tieleman's latest anti-STV rant in the Georgia Straight.

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* Disclosure: I am Declan.

STV meeting, new blog

First off, I went to the Yes campaign Vancouver meeting last Saturday. Don't believe me? (see for yourself). It reminded me why I don't like politics - because it always involves a lot of interacting with other people, one of my least favourite activities. This has nothing to do with the people supporting the yes campaign, who all seem like the kind of knowledgeable, committed people who make democracy work. It's just a recognition of my personality, which is more suited to solitary pursuits than social ones.

Which leads me to my second point, which is that, partly to avoid this blog being overrun by STV posts, and partly just to get all my STV stuff in one place, I have created a new 'Vote Yes' blog.

I cross posted over everything I had posted here on STV already, and I have also added a bunch of posts including:

How did we get here? (Backgrounder) (some background info on what led to this referendum)
What the heck is STV? (an explanation of how the Single Transferrable Vote system works.
Why Vote Yes (short version) (a more concise explanation of why I support switching to STV) and most recently,
A survey of what's out there on the web relating to STV in B.C.

STV: more bits, more pieces

First, the Citizens Assembly website has put together some good flash animations on STV and First Past the Post here.

(If you've watched the Australian animation I linked to a few posts back, you may notice some distinct similarities.)

Second, this is late notice, but if you're interested, there's a public meeting for anyone interested in the 'Yes' campaign this Saturday.

GVRD "Yes" Campaign meeting 1-3 pm, January 29th, 2005. Kerrisdale Community Center. 5851 West Boulevard, Vancouver.

More info, of course can be found on the Yes website.

Another reason to support STV...

...is the truly weak arguments that No supporters make when they try to argue their case.

For today's lesson, let's take Norman Spector's column in the globe from Monday:

Here's how it starts:

"Single transferable nonsense
10 January 2005
The Globe and Mail
A13

The proposal that British Columbia adopt the single transferable vote (STV) in provincial elections is such a dumb idea, one hardly knows where to begin."

He's already said it's dumb AND nonsense and he hasn't even begun yet - sounds like a balanced piece coming up. He continues...

"Have I mentioned that STV supporters are asking us to try on for size the voting system used by only one of the Commonwealth's 53 countries? Now, it's possible that 400,000 Maltese know something the other 1.8 billion inheritors of British political traditions haven't yet grasped, but I wonder."

It turns out that the place to begin was with misleading statistics, bordering on outright lies. Last time I checked, Northern Ireland was part of the commonwealth, as are Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory (of course Norman might argue that sub-national jurisdictions don't count as a valid comparison because we are talking about B.C., which is a - oh, never mind.)

At the national level, Australia uses a form of STV for its Senate. Not to mention the fact that while Ireland (which has used STV since 1922) isn't part of the Commonwealth, to say that they haven't had a chance to be exposed to the great British system of government and all its wonders might be a bit misleading.

He then continues a bit further down (Note: I'm not going to quote every single line in his piece, every now and then I've skipped a few, you should probably start by reading his piece, in its entirety)...

"Proponents of this Rube Goldberg voting system say it's as simple as 1-2-3, but they're unable to explain how STV would work in practice."

Another random insult to raise the tone, and another misleading statement bordering on a lie. A visit to the Citizens Assembly will give anyone a pretty clear idea of how STV would work.

"STV advocates contend that only one country uses the system because it transfers power from politicians and parties to the people. I smell other interests at play."

Actually, only Norman talks about only one country using the system, because as we have noted, he is the only one who has randomly decided to pretend that all the jurisdictions besides Malta which use STV don't exist.

Norman's going to go on to explain how he thinks that it is just fringe elements who want STV because it would help them get elected, but if you ask me, the reason STV isn't more widespread is because it is a more complicated electoral system than first-past-the-post. And that's pretty much how everything in the world works, things start simple, but over time you learn the limitations of the way you do things and you decide to make things better, which generally means making them more complex as well. It's like the history of organized sport (with the gradual addition of fouls, lines, referees, offside rules etc.), organized religion, politics, pretty much everything. Of course if nobody is willing to improve their system until everybody else already has, well, you can see how progress might be a little slow.

"Like all proportional voting systems, STV produces minority governments"

This is true - do you know why? Because one party almost never gets over half the votes. Shocking, isn't it. Unlike first past the post which skews the vote results to artificially create a majority, proportional systems simply reflect the actual vote, and people usually vote for a minority.

"The second largest group of voters are disenfranchised, while fringe groups are empowered. And they multiply. In British Columbia's fruitful climate, that's a recipe for disaster."

God forbid the second largest group of voters are disenfranchised. That's what ALWAYS happened under a majority government - the kind that first past the post almost always produces. And does he even remember the 1996 election, when under first past the post, it was the largest group of voters who were disenfranchised?

As for fringe groups, to get a seat under STV, a party likely needs to get at least 15% if not 20-25% of the total vote in any one riding. Just how fringe is a group that gets that level of support. And what disaster does Spector foresee if a fringe-group like the Green Party (which got 12% of the vote in the last election) gets a few seats? That they might end up in a coalition and have a chance to push for part of their agenda to be implemented? What a disaster.

The rest of the article is pretty much a personal attack on Nick Loenen which attempts to show that since he supports STV and he is opposed to Abortion, STV is an inferior system to First Past the Post (I'm not making this up, that takes up about half the article).

I like it when he says that,

"he [Loenen] and other proponents of STV are proposing to destroy the finest political system in the world, British parliamentary democracy."

Before arbitrarily deciding that British parliamentary democracy is the finest political system in the world, Spector might want to compare the results over the last 40 years of two neighbours, England and Ireland - a comparison in which we see that Ireland (under STV) has emerged from hundreds of years of British oppression to exceed England in just about any measure of societal progress (including economic growth) while England has continued to struggle despite possessing the system which Spector likes so much.

Ireland's success is no proof of anything of course, but it suggests to me that B.C. isn't headed for disaster by 'destroying the finest political system in the world'.

Anyway, here's the big finish:

"Of proposals like Mr. Loenen's, leftie activist Judy Rebick has said, “This may be the only issue where you can have a left-right alliance.” Need I say any more?"

Do you see how after demonizing Loenen for half the article, he now attributes the entire STV decision to him, as if the whole Citizen's Assembly thing had never happened? And of course, all that Judy Rebick's comment means is that electoral reform isn't really a left-right issue, which of course I agree with. For example, I, a centrist, am firmly in favour, as I suspect noted conservative Andrew Coyne would be, as are any number of left wing voices.

So does Spector need to say more? I would say yes. He needs to talk about what the purpose of an electoral system is, he needs to talk about the problems with strategic voting, he needs to address the ethical problems with designing an electoral system to achieve policy objectives (strong government, marginalization of non mainstream voices) instead of simply reflecting the votes cast, and most of all he needs to address the failings of the current system which have led us to this referendum.

Vote Yes to STV on May 17 (if you live in B.C., anyway)

You may have noticed that I added a (somewhat crude - anyone know a good drawing program?) button to the links on the right. This post explains why it's there (Note: there may be some repetition here for longtime readers, for which I apologize, but I wanted to try and get all the relevant information/arguments/resources together into one post)...

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Since the current B.C. Liberal government honoured a campaign promise and brought in fixed election dates we already know, 4 months ahead of time, that on May 17th, B.C. will be going to the polls for a provincial election. At this point, I am somewhat indifferent about which party gets elected (they all have serious problems) although that may change as the date approaches and we actually (hopefully) see some platforms.

But what I will be campaigning for is a 'Yes' vote on the referendum to change the electoral system. The Liberals honoured another election promise by forming a 'Citizen's Assembly' to study whether the electoral system in B.C. should be changed (In the 1996 election the Liberals got more votes than the N.D.P. but the N.D.P. still formed a majority government - this soured the Liberals somewhat on the old (First Past the Post) system).

After months of study, the Assembly recommended that B.C. switch to the 'Single Transferrable Vote' (STV) system which has been used in Ireland since it gained independence in 1922. So along with voting for a party on May 17th, B.C. residents will also vote on whether to switch to STV or to stick to the old system. In order to pass, 60% of people must vote in favour, and there must be a favourable (50% or more, simple majority) vote in favour in at least 60% of the provincial ridings.

I've been reading various people's opinion on whether to vote 'Yes' or 'No' and there seems to be some confusion on what the vote is about:

So, to clarify:

It is not a referendum on how you feel about the Liberal government.
It is not a referendum on the process which was used to generate the choice between STV and the old system.
It is not a choice between STV and your ideal electoral system.
Similarly, it is not a choice between STV and the Mixed Member Proportional System
It is not, or shouldn't be, a choice of which system you think will be best for the party you support.

So, if it's not all that, what is it?

It's simple, it's a choice between whether you think the old (First-Past-the-Post) electoral system or the proposed (STV) system is a better electoral system for B.C.

In order to answer this question we need to ask: what is an electoral system supposed to do? i.e. what makes an electoral system good (or bad)?

In a representative democracy, the electoral system is the mechanism by which all the votes cast (roughly 1.5 million in B.C.) are translated into a list of individuals (79 MLA's in B.C.) who will 'represent' the voters in making laws.¹

In order to do this well, the system needs to accomplish 3 things:

1) Proportionality: The distribution of representatives should be reflective of the distribution of votes. As an extreme example, if some party received 80% of the votes in an election and got 0 seats, we would say that the electoral system had failed. If they got 80% of the votes and 80% of the seats, we would say the system had succeeded.

2) Minimize Wasted Votes: As many people as possible should be represented by someone they voted for. For example, under the current system, if I vote for, say, Bill Derlago and he doesn't get a seat in parliament, there will be nobody in parliament representing my vote, and the system has failed to fully represent me.

3) Ensure Geographic Representation: In addition to each person having representation, each geographical region should have representation as well. For example, if after the B.C. election there were no MLA's from the Okanagan region, we would say the system had failed.²

In order to assess how well each of the two systems do on these 3 tests, we need to understand a bit more about how they work.

First Past the Post

The First-Past-the-Post system is quite simple (in fact simplicity is it's main selling point). The territory in question is divided into equally sized ridings and whoever gets the most votes in each riding is elected.

Proportionality: First Past the Post systems routinely fails to accurately reflect the popular vote in the selection of representatives. Generally speaking, the more parties there are, the worse it does. There are three factors which cause distortion under First Past the Post:

1) The rich get richer: In general, the more votes a party gets, the more it is overrepresented in the legislature. For example, in the last B.C. election, the Liberal party got 57% of the vote, but got 97% (all but 2) of the seats. In the previous election, the N.D.P. got 39% of the votes and got 52% of the seats (and formed a majority). The corollary to this of course, is that parties which get fewer votes are underrepresented. As an example, in the 2001 election in B.C. the Green Party got 12% of the votes (an almost identical percentage as the Bloc Quebecois got in the last federal election) and got 0 seats. Which leads nicely into factor 2)...

2) Regional is better: In general, a party whose voters are more regionally concentrated will be overrepresented in the legislature. We see this most clearly in the national parliament where in the last election the Bloc Quebecois (whose support is concentrated in the French speaking parts of one province) gained 18% of the seats (54 seats) despite only getting 12% of the total vote. The corollary to this is that parties with broad-based support from all regions are underrepresented. The most extreme recent case of this was in the 1993 federal election when the nationally supported Progressive Conservative party got 16% of the vote but only got 0.6% of the seats (2 seats).

3) Luck: Finally, there is an element of pure chance in that a party which happens to win a lot of ridings by close margins will be overrepresented while a party which happens to lose a lot of ridings by close margins will be underrepresented - as happened to some extent in the 1996 B.C. election.

So, the First-Past-the-Post system gives unearned seats to the big, the regionally concentrated and the lucky. And by the same token it cheats the small, the broadly supported and the unlucky.

However, there are further, less obvious problems of proportionality in the First Past the Post system. Because of the way it operates, the First Past the Post system may distort the actual vote itself, by forcing people to vote for someone who is not their first preference.

Consider the case of Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. How many people would have preferred to vote for one of them but didn't because by voting for Perot they actually helped elect Clinton and by voting for Nader (instead of Kerry) they would help elect Bush.

Under First Past the Post, having two parties with a similar message is counter-productive, which discourages the formation of new parties, discourages voting for new parties if they do form, and discourages the continued existence of the new parties even if people do vote for them. Consider the case of the Reform/Alliance party and the Progressive Conservative party. The two parties had different messages which appealed differently to different people. But because they appealed to similar, overlapping groups of people, the two parties were effectively forced to merge in order to have any chance of electoral success.

The end result is that people are never really given the option of voting for the party that they would choose in an unbiased system, so the vote count itself is not proportional with the preferences of the population.

Wasted Votes: With only 2 parties, the proportion of those votes which are wasted (i.e. the percent of the population not represented by anyone they voted for) varies from a maximum of 50%, down to about 25% in really lopsided elections. As the number of parties increases, the number of wasted votes increases. For example, in a four party race, one candidate could win election with only 30% of the votes (with the other 3 getting 25, 25% and 20% respectively). In this case, 70% of the voters will be left unrepresented.

Geographical Representation: First Past the Post does a good job of this, and ensures that each riding is represented by one person.



Single Transferrable Vote:

Before explaining what STV is, it's worth considering what the opposite of First Past the Post would be. First Past the Post breaks the territory down into a number of regions (ridings) such that there are as many ridings as representatives and then chooses one representative from each riding. The opposite would be to only have one riding (equal in size to the whole territory) and then choose all your representatives from that one riding.

This opposite system is known as [Pure] Proportional Representation or Party List Proportional Representation (since it is normally implemented in such a way that who gets elected from each party is based on a list that each party puts together - although there's theoretically no necessity to implement it that way).

Pure Proportional Representation achieves (surprise, surprise) perfect proportionality, but does it by sacrificing geographic representation (and in the case of party lists, people are only really assured that they are represented by the party they voted for, not the individual). It is generally used in geographically compact places where geography isn't a big issue.

So, given that First Past the Post and Pure PR represent two extremes (One person elected per riding & perfect geographic representation vs. one riding from which everyone is elected & perfect proportionality) how do we compromise between them?

There are two ways. The first is to elect half (or some percentage) of the members from First Past the Post and half (or some percentage) from Pure PR. This approach leads to what is typically known as the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP), the system which was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada and the one which is going to referendum in P.E.I. in November. MMP is a pretty good system and, if you ask me, it's about equally as good as STV in general and probably better for large territories with many regional parties (like the federal government in Canada).

In B.C. however, the Citizen's Assembly rejected MMP and chose the second way to compromise: fewer ridings with more than one person elected from each one - STV.

Under STV you could have, for example, a riding from which 5 people would be elected (this riding would be 5 times the size of the old ridings if you wanted to keep the number of representatives the same). Voters would rank candidates starting with #1 and continuing up to #5. After that, anyone who gets enough first place votes (more than 1/6th of the total, since only 5 people can get more than 1/6 of the votes) is elected (if someone has more votes than they need, then their 'extra' votes are redistributed among the remaining candidates) and if nobody has enough votes to get elected than the person with the fewest first place votes is knocked out and the second place votes on their ballots are redistributed. This process repeats until 5 people are left standing.

It's a bit complicated although it becomes pretty clear if you watch the cute animation here (note: what the Aussie's call Proportional Representation in the animation is what we call STV).

So how does STV do on our three criteria for an effective electoral system?

Proportionality: While not as good as an MMP system or a Pure PR system, STV does much better than First Past the Post. The more people are elected from each riding, the more it resembles pure PR and the better the proportionality.

Minimize Wasted Votes: Because it allows you to express more than one preference, STV is probably the best system for making sure people have someone in parliament who they voted for, since even if their first choice was a fringe candidate with no hope of being elected, once that candidate is eliminated, their second preference will be counted.

Ensure Geographic Representation: Under STV every representative, represents a specific geographic area and every area has (more than one) representative. Some might say this is a disadvantage vs. First Past the Post since the one-to-one connection between citizen and geographical representative has been broken. Others may see it as an improvement since now voters have a choice of more than one representative from their area they can go to in case of trouble, giving them more choice. Personally, I'd say it's a draw, but that's a judgment call.

So on our 3 main criteria, STV is clearly superior on two and about even on the other. This is why the button I added to my site says, 'STV for True Democracy' - because true democracy means an assembly which accurately represents the votes cast and which doesn't waste the votes of half the population.

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Other Issues:

Besides the 3 primary tests I identified, there are a variety of other issues which can be considered in comparing electoral systems:

Ease of entry for new parties:

First Past the Post: Very difficult. A new party typically needs to get at least 30% of the vote in a single riding in order to elect someone. What percent of the total vote they need in order to get someone elected depends on how regionally concentrated they are. That's why most new parties which form and are able to win seats under First Past the Post are regional protest parties.

Of course even these regional protest parties generally don't last all that long since they don't have the support to form a government and under First Past the Post, they just take votes from any other party with similar policies. So not only can they not gain any power, their presence tends to lead to the party they are protesting against taking power (Perot=Clinton victory, Nader=Bush victory, Reform=Liberal government) This is why there's even a 'law' which says that First Past the Post systems naturally lead to only having two political parties.

STV: Easier. Strategic voting is no longer a problem and a new party will start getting close to gaining seats as its support reaches double digits (roughly - it depends on how many members are elected per riding - the more, the better the chances for small parties).

Support for Extremist Parties: Mildly easier under STV but since you still need at least 10% of the vote (more in most cases) to get a seat, it's a question of how extreme a view something is if 1 in 10 people support it as their first preference.

Turnout: First Past the Post - probably the worst system, due to the high percentage of wasted votes, large numbers of safe seats where the outcome isn't in doubt, the problem of strategic voting and a lack of choice among candidates.

STV: Its complexity may discourage some people, and the percentage of spoiled ballots may be slightly higher, but the far greater choice, combined with no problem with strategic voting, no/fewer safe seats and fewer wasted votes would lead one to believe that turnout would increase under STV vs. First Past the Post.

Choice Among Candidates from the same Party: First Past the Post: none - if you want to vote conservative in Calgary West in the Federal Election you have to vote Rob Anders, the party tells you who to vote for.

STV: Yes - how many choices you have depends on how many people are elected from your riding. If 5, then you would have up to 5 choices of Conservative candidates to vote for.

Complexity: First Past the Post: Probably the simplest system you could come up with other than just flipping a coin.

STV: More complex. It is easy to vote (just put a 1 beside your first choice, a 2 beside your second choice, etc.) but the process for determining who gets elected in each riding is somewhat complicated (in order to make it as fair as possible).

Party Control of Electoral Process: First Past the Post: Limited to choosing who runs in each riding.

STV: Even more limited since voters can choose among the various candidates nominated by a party in a certain riding. If they don't like one of the people who wins nomination, the other candidates will be elected first. This makes it difficult for party leaders to parachute in' outsiders.

Likelihood of Majority Government: First Past the Post: High - because parties with more votes get disproportionately more seats under First Past the Post, majority governments are more likely. This is seen as a plus by those who believe that strong government is better government (up to a point - they generally don't support dictatorship) and who don't mind skewing the results to achieve it.

STV: Lower, because STV is generally proportional, in order to gain a majority the party would need to get close to 50% of the total vote. This doesn't happen very often (although it could, if that's what voters wanted).

Some people express concern that in a minority government situation, a small party could hold the balance of power (like the Bloc does in our current Federal government). Of course, this doesn't mean that a small party can get whatever it wants. Even if it does enter into a partnership with the ruling party, it is generally a junior partner and is lucky to get progress on a couple of it's key issues (those least objectionable to the ruling party, generally). Really, the only change is that the small party holding the balance of power (and the people who voted for them) won't be completely ignored like they would be under a majority situation.

Representation of Women (+ Ethnic Groups, etc.): Although women make up half the population, they have historically made up a much smaller percentage of assembly members under First Past the Post systems. Party list systems (including MMP) can increase the number of women in parliament, basically because the party leaders decide who gets elected, so if they want, they can decide that a certain percentage of those people should be women.

However, like First Past the Post, STV require candidates to both win a nomination for a riding and then win a seat in the riding itself so it isn't likely to increase the number of women elected. In fact, since STV is both more competitive and offers voters more choice than First Past the Post, it may lead to fewer women: if, that is, women are not being elected due to an unwillingness to compete or because voters don't want to vote for women.

Level of Change from Past: First Past the Post: None, First Past the Post is the past.
STV: STV would be a fairly significant change although, if you believe this book (a fairly famous work, which probably deserves a post or two itself), any impact on government effectiveness is likely to be limited - change would be limited to the composition of the assembly. Of course, if you don't like change for any reason, it makes sense to vote for the status quo.

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Conclusion:

Simple enough?

If not, let's just say that just about anyone who has studied electoral systems seriously (like the Citizen's Assembly) has concluded that STV is better than First Past the Post and the last few decades have seen a lot of countries switch away from First Past the Post and hasn't seen any (that I know of) switch to it. There are reasons for this, and those reasons are what I tried to capture in this post and they're why I'll be voting yes on May 17th.

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Notes:

¹For those of you more comfortable in the symbolic world, the electoral system could be considered: F(v) = a, where v = the votes cast, a = the composition of the elected assembly and F is the function (electoral system) which takes v as input and produces a as output. And yes, I am a bit of a math geek.

² Some may wonder why geography is so important but other possible criteria for representation (class, gender, occupational class etc.) are ignored. If so, you should go read Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs. As she explains, the work of government (and what makes it ethically different from commerce and trade) is that it involves the control and management of physical territory. Hence the importance of territorial representation in the parliament.

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Some Resources:

Tons of relevant information at the site for the Citizen's Assembly

Additional info on First Past the Post, and Single Transferrable Vote, at Wikipedia

Dave Pollard had an excellent post on STV over at How to Save the World

The Electoral Reform Society has been studying what electoral systems work the best longer than anyone.

The best illustration of how STV works that I've seen can be found in a flash animation
put together by South Australia's State Electoral Office

One thing to note is that what the Aussie's refer to as Proportional Representation in the animation, we call Single Transferrable Vote, and what they call 'Exclusion (Bottom's Up)' is often referred to as Instant Runoff voting here.

A report on electoral reform from the Law Commission of Canada.

Fair Vote Canada is a group that was been working on improving the electoral systems across Canada.

Here is the same Vote Yes to STV campaign website that the button links to.

Finally, if you think I'm long-winded on this topic, don't go here. Within that site, you can also find this concise summary of the experience with STV in Ireland
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