For once I have to agree with Trevor Carolan.
In today's North Shore News (Page 6) he makes the statement that "the referendum on the future of our voting system offers the only real excitement this time around." He adds,"If you're fed up with politics as usual, the real election issue for you ought to be the Single Transferable Vote (STV) referendum."
He's absolutely right. The way the rest of the election is going the outcome appears to be a foregone conclusion for most voters, while the voters' decision on STV is still up for grabs.
Carolyn goes on to recommend we vote in favour of STV because "our present system needs changing."
With the polarized right versus left debate dominating the decision in selecting our MLAs, I suspect voters might be convinced over the next week to support the change to STV. When we step into the voting booth, saying YES to changing a system we generally distrust might actually be an easy choice.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
DAY 20: North Shore Support of STV
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8 opinions/comments:
No, he's absolutely wrong and trying to misdirect the voters. STV has to be assessed on it's own merits. The Assembly could have chosen a lot of other systems but wrongly got it in their heads that they could fix the legislature by changing the voting system.
They ignored the main principles that they claimed to be crucial, local representation, our area would be a 6 MLA multi member super riding, from Powell River to Deep Cove.
STV is not proportional, it can deliver it but the big parties can run as many candidates as they would have won anyway. Even with focused resources a smaller party will not be able to afford to compete in such huge ridings.
The final flaw is that they thought (wrongly) that they would create minority govts and thus a more civil legislature. I guess that's what has happened federally, right? The House of Commons is totally out to lunch and not functioning right now.
I'm not even going to get into the complexity of the system, if a voter casts votes and they don't understand the full implications of their vote, the results will be different than his/her intentions.
Vote NO to this nonsense.
Pete:
Great analysis. But really how complex is this anyhow? Is this not essentially the same type of preferential ballot used in the traditional Party Candidate Selection process.
No, it is not. That is an Alternative Vote (AV) system which can also be done as a run-off election as in France and Russia, two weeks later you have the second round between the two front runners. AV would be applied in the current ridings to ensure that the elected person receives over 50% of the vote.
STV creates multi member districts where in our case we would elect 6 MLAs but rank every candidate. It is likely that over 80 candidates would run and voters would have to rank them 1 t 80. The first choice votes are counted and if no one received the threshold (votes cast / number of seats +1) 7 in our case, the bottom person's second place votes are reassigned. If a candidate received more than the threshold than his/her "extra" votes are reassigned.
In the first case, there would be a large group of minor fringe candidates like Richard the Troll whose 50 votes would be reassigned. In the second case, let's say Ralph Sultan gets 100 votes more than the threshold, they would take a random 100 votes and reassign them.
Once all the minor fringe candidates are gone and those few votes haven't really impacted the system, we would get to the real election. There would a right wing party, if they were smart only ran one candidate and a left wing, Green in the current times, who are probably not smart enough to run one candidate. Those votes, depending on the area would go to each of the two main parties depending on the left/right orientation. It's likely the same people be elected.
Only in the case where you had enough first place votes to position yourself ahead of the big parties would anything change but someone like Dennis Perry who is trying to surf a local issue to victory (the tunnel / Bluffs), the people in most of the new multi member riding wouldn't know/care about the issue. Hard core party people can concentrate their vote behind a single candidate but it is necessary to connect to the local people to overthrow the control the big parties have on the system.
An independant would have no chance although the Assembly brags it makes their job easier.
The pro campaign has been based on lies and misdirection. Trevor's main point was, If you hate dogs, here's a cat, therefore you must love it.
Total Bull!
The point of my original post was simply that for most people this election has been blasé. Further that in the final week of the campaign the STV debate might be the only thing that peaks everyone's interest (right or wrong). And finally, that when we are each in that voting booth the average person (who knows very little about STV) might find it easier to vote YES for something than vote against it.
Case in point this morning's Vancouver Sun (May 9th). On page B4 we have local celebrities Rafe Mair and David Suzuki throwing their support behind STV at Sunday's rally in downtown Vancouver. In the article, Mair says "voting for the STV system...would lead to more independence for MLAs and force them to talk to the people who put them there." I'm not sure this is true but this message will resonate well with voters.
David Suzuki added his two bits by stating, "...ever since he started voting, he has felt his vote was wasted because it rarely led to a winning candidate or a governing party." Suzuki concludes by saying, "I think that STV ensures that every one of our votes really matters."
Reality or not, these messages might make sense when people mark their 'X' on May 17th.
anything would be better that what we have now...give an STV over FPTP any day! What do you think of that Smitty?
Better the devil you know! All this will do is shift 8-10 NDP seats to Green seats.
True, but in '96 the BC Liberals got the majority of the vote and minority of the seats and the NDP (No Damn Potential) won! Do you want that to happen again? We need a real BC Conservative party, that way they can form a coalition partner to the BC Liberals and everyone will be happy.
not so fast there Mack...the BC Conservatives are alive and kicking! Dave Evans, the candidate in Surrey-White Rock put the boots to the BC Libs and Gordie Hogg the other night at an all-can meeting...based on that performance I don't think you'll see any coalition between these two parties anytime soon.
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