Social Studies 11
Posted by: Frédéric Van Caenegem in British Columbia, Issues & politics, tags: BC-STV, STVA student asked me a few questions about BC-STV for her Social Studies 11 course a few days ago. Here were my answers!
> When you first time heard about BC-STV?
In 2004, when the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform (http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/) decided that STV should be used for British Columbia. I didn’t follow that much the discussion about the work of the Citizens’ Assembly so I was quite surprised by their decision. At the time I was a loose supporter of MMP electoral system (used in Germany). I was actually a bit disappointed by their decision actually. But after looking into more details at BC-STV, I started to like it more and more!
> What do think about this new system according to your own understanding?
My post here (http://blog.vancf.net/2009/02/10/bc-stv/) will answer most of this question. But to actually answer it…
Years ago, when I looked at the problems of our electoral system, I started to imagine what would be a perfect electoral system and… I didn’t find it. It seems to me that each system is perfect in some way and fails completely in an other way.
The current system (First Past The Post: FPTP) doesn’t provide representation for the diversity of political opinion. A party can easily get 18% of the vote and no seats and, on the same election, an other party will form a majority government with… 37% of the vote!
Proportional electoral systems (PR: used in many European countries) will fix that but… it creates chaotic politics where there are so many political parties that politics becomes overwhelmingly complicated, everyone gets represented, but there is no consensus building. As I have seen in a French comedy show a few years ago, “If for some reason you don’t a find a party that represent you, you don’t have to worry. You can simply create your own political party and vote for yourself!”
In Germany, they use a mix system. Half of their Parliament is filled used FPTP and the other half using PR. It actually makes it better in some ways! It moderates the problems of both systems. But it doesn’t eliminate them completely.
So when the Citizens’ Assembly proposed that we should use STV I was… surprised! This system is almost not used anywhere I didn’t know a lot about it myself but, as I mentioned earlier, the more I looked at STV, the more I liked it!
STV is a compromise system. A way to have proportional representation and keep local representation. In many ways, STV is not perfect and this imperfection is its strength!
In STV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If a voter’s first choice is eliminated, their vote is simply transferred to their second choice! And that makes all the difference in the world. It gives voters have a lot of power as their vote has significant impact!
> Do you think there are still some shortcomings in this new system? Compare to the old one?
It’s got complex mathematics, I know a lot of supporters of STV don’t like to mention this, but STV has complex mathematics that are actually based of simple principles. They are not too difficult to understand, but you need to look at it closely a few minutes to understand these mathematics. The current system can be understood in 2 seconds! And sometimes people are used to that simplicity and have difficulty to realize that electoral system can bit a bit more sophisticated. STV is more sophisticated, but barely more complicated than the current electoral system. And anyone can understand it. Hopefully most pro-STV volunteers can also explain it!
> Which one are you prefer? Why?
BC-STV! It provides proportionality and fair results, gives almost everyone an MLA they voted for, get rids of strategic voting and actually improves local representation. FPTP… is simple! But unfair and gives a lot of power to party strategists and not to voters.
Hope these answers helps,
Frédéric.
Entries (RSS)