STV is not good for Bill Tieleman

About a week ago, I went to the www.trystv.ca website.  Even though a random sample of people have not taken the STV style poll on the BC election, I counted the number of men and women that would be elected.  At that time, I determined that about 31% of the winning candidates would be women.  In the BC legislative assembly at dissolution, about 22 percent of the MLAs were women.  I do think that if BC-STV achieves the 60% hurdle, in the first couple of elections at least 30% of the winning candidates will be women.

On to Bill Tieleman and David Schreck, two BC NDP honchos:

If I were living in BC, I would not be voting for the NDP this time.  I'd rather vote for the Greens or BC Liberals.  In theory, Tieleman and Shreck are running the First Past the Post campaign independently of the NDP organization.  Unfortunately, the party leadership has not taken sides in the referendum debate.  If the BC-STV fails to reach the 60 percent threshold and if the NDP forms a majority government, I can see Messrs Tieleman and Schreck being invited to work with Carole James.

I have always thought that the NDP represented average Canadians.  With Tieleman and Schreck campaigning for First Past the Post, and with the BC NDP not taking a stand in favour of BC STV, I know that the NDP want to represent their own elite interests.

First Past the Post is for the party honchos;

BC-STV is for the people of British Columbia.

ReeferMadness, please check your PMs.

Skinny Dipper wrote:

With Tieleman and Schreck campaigning for First Past the Post, and with the BC NDP not taking a stand in favour of BC STV, I know that the NDP want to represent their own elite interests.

A leap too far. A non-sequitur.

A great many active BC New Democrats are working in the Vote For BC-STV campaign.

"Some" people in the BC NDP want to represent their own elite interests. Some Liberals are also opposed to BC-STV. In fact, in the 2005 referendum surveys showed that BC-STV had, as you would expect, more support among NDP voters than among Liberal voters. I expect the same will be true this time. Actually I hope I'm wrong. We need more Liberal voter support than we got last time.

Tieleman writes that STV "breaks each single vote into fractions.

This is simply wrong. Many votes are never transferred, and stay with their top preference, intact.

He is also wrong to assert that individual voters cannot track their votes through the count. The count is deterministic and it is perfectly possible to track how an individual vote transfers.

remind wrote:

And why would some votes stay intact while others fractionalize?

When a candidate gets more votes than required to get elected, the excess votes transfer to the voters next preferences. However, to ensure that every vote for said candidate is treated equally, what transfers is a fraction of each vote, so we don't get a situation where some votes transfer (ie. count twice), and some votes don't (also would be impossible to fairly determine which votes would transfer, and which would not). So if say Jenny Kwan gets 10% more votes on the first ballot than the number required to win, 10% of every first place vote for Jenny Kwan transfers to the voters next preference (rather than having 10% of votes transfer in their entirety, and 90% not transfer at all).

The weird thing about this discussion is that it should be the Greens, not New Democrats, complaining that MMP would have been better for them than the current BC-STV map. The average District Magnitude of the present map is 4.25. As Michael Gallagher's book about Ireland's 2007 election notes, Fianna Fail got 46.7% of the seats on 41.6% of the votes, while the second party Fine Gael got 30.9% of the seats on 27.3% of the votes, and Labour also got a bonus while all others (including the Greens) got fewer seats than their vote share.

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The (Fianna Fail) party remains overrepresented by the electoral system due mainly to the small average number of TDs per constituency (only four, which is very low by the standards of
proportional representation systems internationally)

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Under PR-STV, candidates, especially in the two major parties, are in competition with their running mates as well as with candidates from other parties, and some of the most intense battles take place within the party fold. From the party's point of view, this competition can be beneficial; it gives each candidate an incentive to bring in as many votes as he/she can, both by active campaigning and by his/her work between elections, and thus contributes to maximising the party's overall vote total. At the same time, the party must try to ensure that intra-party competition does not get out of hand and disrupt its cohesion, leading to splits or the creation of bitterly opposed factions. In addition, candidates sense that concentrating their fire on a running mate rather than on the opposition does not impress the voters and, moreover, is likely to be looked askance upon by the party leadership and central organisation and may thus be costly when promotional opportunities (minister, frontbench spokesperson, parliamentary committee chair) arise. Consequently, parties try to maintain a public facade of unity, knowing that the media will prick up their ears if the fur starts flying in fights between its candidates.

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Its defeat came in Cork SC, where Dan Boyle, who had been seen as a likely minister if the party entered government, lost to Labour in one of the biggest surprises of the election. Because Boyle was seen as a virtual certainty to be re-elected, his campaign could not credibly send out the message that every vote was crucial. Irish politicians seeking election react to being described as 'safe' in the same way as Count Dracula reacts to garlic, and while their horror at the word sometimes seems to border on superstition, Boyle's defeat is a reminder that it is by no means irrational.

Baron Visi wrote:

Tieleman writes that STV "breaks each single vote into fractions.
This is simply wrong. Many votes are never transferred, and stay with their top preference, intact.

remind wrote:

1. Like I said before, STV pits party member against party member, not just against other party's members. In BC, politics is a blood sport, I do not see it getting women more involved in politics, I see it being a mechanism to get women less involved, as a matter of fact.

The NDP has done it with FPTP -- 50% women candidates, well done -- provided 50% are elected. Usually male incumbents have better chances. With BC-STV, if four candidates are nominated in a district, two men and two women, will all the male incumbents win? I don't know. When you pit female party member against male party member, will women tend to win? The reason I think so is because 90% of Canadian voters want to see more women elected. But maybe BC is different? And then we come to the Liberals, with only 29% women candidates. If they nominate four in a district, will it be only one woman and three men? Maybe sometimes. But the women may do better than the men. If the male vote is split three ways and more women vote for the woman, she will survive the early counts while some of the men are eliminated. That's the tactic to win in STV: manage to get others to drop first. Yes, you're right, more competition might be bad for women if the Liberals run big name males and sports stars while their women candidates are unknowns. If BC Liberal voters fall for that, they will not elect as many women as the NDP does. Well, that's the case today anyway.

remind wrote:

2. Ireland wants their STV gone, why would we adopt it? Especially considering the old boy's net work it sustains in Ireland, which would happen here in a NY minute.

What makes you say Ireland wants to get rid of STV? I have seen no evidence of that. In their last referendum, when the largest party tried for obvious reasons to scrap it, voters voted to keep it. Currently STV hurts Sinn Fein, but they have not advocated scrapping it, nor changing to a more proportional system.

remind wrote:

3. Huge numbers of candidates running for each electoral district in BC making electional processes impossible, and thus discouraging voters from voting even more.

The Citizens Assembly decided to make it easy for lazy voters to vote, by using the Tasmanian ballot rather than the Irish ballot. In Ireland all candidates are listed alphabetically. In Tasmania they are grouped by party. If someone doesn't care to rank 14 candidates, they can just go 1, 2, 3, 4 on their party's candidates. But a lot of people who don't bother to cast wasted votes now will turn out to vote -- for the NDP in West Vancouver and the Okanagan, for the Greens and Marijuana Party and progressive independents everywhere, and likely a strong majority of these new progressive voters will give a second preference to an NDP candidate. Even in East Vancouver in the safest NDP seats where some NDP voters see no need to get off their butts and vote, they will have a reason to vote, when every vote counts.

remind wrote:

4.  Huge electoral districts, bigger than we already have, which means even less representation in rural areas and more domination from urban areas.

You may call them huge, but they look okay to me. If you look at how large federal ridings are, and then imagine how much larger they will be if we adopt MMP federally, they will be the same size as a BC-STV four-seater.

remind wrote:

5.  Having to use computer voting, as there is no way hand counting will work given the amount of candidates there will be. This is a negative push away factor for several reasons.

The ballots can be re-counted by hand, if Elections BC uses computer tabulation to get a winner on election night.

remind wrote:

6.  Having 2-5 elected MLA's fighting with each other in any given electoral district, and being concerned with only how they  will keep being a representative, over the other 4, is not my idea of representation for the masses. Too much room for dirty tricks, and less for actual riding work.

You would really rather have only a Liberal MLA to do riding work in your riding? One of the great virtues of MMP as used in Scotland is that every voter has a day-to-day choice: go to your local member or one of your seven regional members, presumably one from the party you voted for, likely a woman member if you wish. If you have two NDP MLAs from your district, will they fight to represent you? In the Lower Mainland I expect they will share an office and you can see whichever you want. In other areas they may each take on half of the district, but you could still see the MLA serving the other part of the district if you prefer.

remind wrote:

7. Have 5 representatives from 1 party, as will be the case in some riding, is not my idea of fair representation. And it will happen of that there is no doubt.

No, it will certainly not happen. There is no five-seat district in BC where one party could win 84% of the vote. Or do you mean five Liberals from the six-seater in West Vancouver? But that would take 72% of the vote. Based on the 2005 votes in West Vancouver the result would be three Liberals, two NDP and one Green. I'm not guessing, I have a spreadsheet.

ReeferMadness wrote:

I recall someone (maybe you) saying that many regions that are currently represented by only one party will now be represented by 2 or even 3.  For example, the 2 northeastern ridings almost always return 2 Liberals under the current system but under STV would likely return 1 Liberal, 1 NDP.  Right?

Right. Other examples, all based on voters voting the same as they did in 2005, and putting those votes into the new districts based on the 2005 boundaries, which isn't precisely right but the best I can do:

Fraser Valley East, was solidly Liberal, would likely have been 3 Lib, 2 NDP.

North Shore - Sea to Sky, was four Liberals, would have been 2 Lib, 1 NDP, 1 Green

Okanagan - Shuswap, was solidly Liberal, would have been (unless more than 45% of the Green vote goes Liberal) 2 Lib, 2 NDP.

Okanagan - Boundary, was solidly Liberal, would have been 2 Lib, 1 NDP.

North Central (Prince George) was 3 Lib, would have been 2 Lib, 1 NDP. 

Conversely, to be fair, the Capital District went 5 NDP and 2 Lib, but would have gone 3 NDP, 3 Lib, 1 Green.

Wilf Day wrote:

You would really rather have only a Liberal MLA to do riding work in your riding? One of the great virtues of MMP as used in Scotland is that every voter has a day-to-day choice: go to your local member or one of your seven regional members, presumably one from the party you voted for, likely a woman member if you wish. If you have two NDP MLAs from your district, will they fight to represent you? In the Lower Mainland I expect they will share an office and you can see whichever you want. In other areas they may each take on half of the district, but you could still see the MLA serving the other part of the district if you prefer.

I have to say, living in Scotland, this characteristic of the electoral system is a treat. When I had questions about the recycling program in my riding, I emailed each of my MSPs, each of whom returned a variety of results--including a Green Party regional MSP with a personal response. I was spoilt for choice for which member I wanted to approach depending on my personal politics. The idea is that they will fight for you, the consituent, not against each other. I've had a positive experience every time I've tried to contact an MSP here: completely unlike my experience in Canada when an MP or MPP has virtually no reason to respond to a person with marginal concerns, especially when that member might be a party bigwig.

I don't know if women were eliminated from politics when STV was introduced in Ireland.  I don't think the Irish became Xenaphobic because they switched to STV.  Does anyone have the stats on women's participation before and after the introduction of STV?

Thanks Vorshlumpf for the info on the representation of women.

A story that I will tell again is about when I went into a bank in Spain in 1991.  All of the bank tellers were men whereas in Canada, most were women.  I asked someone why all of the Spanish bank tellers were men.  "Men handle the money."  It was a chavinistic statement but fitting for a macho culture that was present in Spain at the time.  I also learned that men who wore shorts on a hot evening were considered "gay."  Straight men in Spain did not wear shorts at night-time.  I don't know if they do now.  Luckily, I was a tourist who was with a bunch of other young tourists wearing shorts.  Therefore, we didn't get beaten up or called names.

Different cultures will have an effect on the results of elections.  Places like Ireland and Malta may elect a lower percentage of women than Australia which uses a form of STV in its Senate elections.

Back to STV:  Any voting system will have a range of percentage of women who get elected.  Based on the results that Vorshlumpf listed above, STV seems to have wider range with a higher upper level of women's participation.  If British Columbians support BC-STV by over 60%, women will probably represent at least 30% of the legislative assembly just after the first BC-STV election.  They were at 22% when the legislature was dissolved.

remind wrote:

Wilf, sorry, but your response lacked any affirmative push for STV as far as I am concerned.

Ireland apparently has had a history of stuffed ballot boxes and electoral fraud with STV. Hence the push to get rid of STV, that was defeated by MLA's and not the people and apparently there were problems with that vote too.

Scotland has MMP, not STV, so your words in that respect mean nothing to me by way of support for STV, moreover, what about the 100+k worth of spoiled ballots in the first Scottish election?

Absolutely NO computerized voting in BC, or indeed Canada, I don't care if they "can" be hand counted or not.

And I still see STV as elminating women from politics, just as it has in Ireland.

And I am not willing to go from 85 ridings to 20, with urban centres dominating the votes and even less accountability will happen, the MLA's can sluff it off on another and play the blame game all damn day. Rural communities will be excluded from consideration more than they are now.

Respectfully, your  extremely hypothetical positives mean nothing in context of real  BC people and elections.

His positives seem to me to be far less hypothetical than your negatives. I think electronic voting is OK as long as there is a verifiable paper trail, but I have seen hand-counted at-large situations with municipal elections where there were 20 odd candidates on the ballot. Granted, they only had to be counted once, but I hardly see the potential number of candidates being a problem. Fringe parties (and in this context the Greens may or may not be a fringe party; probably not if they are able to run 82 candidates in FPTP) are unlikely to run in all ridings or run more than a couple of candidates in a particular riding. And there would be fewer candidates running overall across the province depending on what strategies each party used (how many candidates to run in each riding). Please explain why going from 85 ridings to 20 changes the urban/rural balance when the proportion of urban/rural seats doesn't change (if you think it does please explain how).

Scotland has both MMP and STV. It uses STV for local elections, like a number of other places.

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I've given the matter some thought an my conclusion is that there are a lot of 'true believers' that simply aren't democrats anymore.  They've seen too many of the 'wrong type' of governments elected and have come to the conclusion that people are generally ignorant, unintelligent, immoral, apathetic or some combination of all four.  They believe they are saving the peopel from themselves.  The power brokers know best and a patina of democracy will suffice to keep people content.  I have a certain level of sympathy for their lack of faith in people because there are an awful lot of uninformed, apathetic people out there.  Fundamentally, though, I believe that democracy cannot be a spectator sport.  If it is, it will wither away.

I agree with that.  I can also empathize with the low opinion of democracy we see from a lot of these FPTP supporters but I think you are right that it is a self-defeating strategy.  They end up taking ridicuous positions like blaming people for voting for the Greens and splitting the vote while crusading against electoral reform which would directly address this problem.

This referendum has been an eye-opener for me on what Social Democratic actually means in the BC context.

remind wrote:

Scotland has MMP, not STV, so your words in that respect mean nothing to me by way of support for STV.

Your complaint was about BC-STV "having 2-5 elected MLA's fighting with each other in any given electoral district, and being concerned with only how they will keep being a representative, over the other 4." I was pointing out that regional MMP has the same effect. Indeed BC-STV and regional open-list MMP have a lot in common with each other.

remind wrote:

what about the 100+k worth of spoiled ballots in the first Scottish election?

remind wrote:

Ireland apparently has had a history of stuffed ballot boxes and electoral fraud with STV. Hence the push to get rid of STV, that was defeated by MLA's and not the people and apparently there were problems with that vote too.

remind wrote:

Absolutely NO computerized voting in BC, or indeed Canada, I don't care if they "can" be hand counted or not.

remind wrote:

And I still see STV as eliminating women from politics, just as it has in Ireland. And I am not willing to go from 85 ridings to 20, with urban centres dominating the votes and even less accountability will happen, the MLA's can sluff it off on another and play the blame game all damn day. Rural communities will be excluded from consideration more than they are now.

As for urban centres dominating larger districts, that's why I don't want federal STV in Ontario; I can see a three-seater district in which one candidate from each party would win, and they'd all be from Peterborough. But I don't see where in BC this is likely except maybe in Prince George if the Green Party support rose to the 25% level.

But if you want every vote to count, so every NDP voter has an NDP MLA to go to, which is basic to any PR model much as MMP as well as STV, then you have several MLAs representing the same area. So I really don't see the point of that objection.

Skinny Dipper wrote:

STV lets me focus on the quality of candidates.

Careful of that argument. That's a justification for most of the winning candidates on the list being Toronto males. That's what killed MMP in Ontario.

BC-STV guarantees regional representation with the 20 districts, and the number of MLAs per district are small enough that women won't get lost in the crowd.

In 1992, 68.3% of British Columbians opposed the Charlottetown Accord which the the elites and backroom boys of Canada wanted Canadians to support.

In 2009, elite backroom boys, Tieleman and Schreck, want British Columbians to oppose a voting system that was supported by average BCers at a Citizens' Assembly on electoral reform.

Oppose the antiquated First-Past-the-Post voting system; support BC-STV (Single Transferable Vote).

remind wrote:

7. Have 5 representatives from 1 party, as will be the case in some riding, is not my idea of fair representation. And it will happen of that there is no doubt.

Presumably you know of some group of 5 adjacent BC single-seat provincial ridings in which 80+% of the votes have been cast for one party. Please tell us about it.

Not sure if this is somewhere else, but Tieleman is now the President of the No STV campaign:

"Bill Tieleman, president of the No STV campaign, said Friday that he thinks the latest poll results show the more people learn about BC-STV, the more they dislike it.

He added that this referendum, people can see the actual larger riding boundaries – BC-STV would reduced the current 85 single-member ridings to 20 multi-member ridings, ranging from two to seven MLAs to be elected in each constituency.

“I think people now have an opportunity to see how this will work,” he said of the proposed new system."

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/polls+show+rejected/1577960/story.html

Brian White wrote:

1.  STV pits party member against party member, (It does not "pit" anyone against anyone. You get your transfers from second and 3rd preferences. And transfers is what gets you elected. The pitbulls do not get transfers and do not get elected)

What do you mean the pitbulls do not get transfers?

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2. Ireland wants their STV gone, why would we adopt it? Especially considering the old boy's net work it sustains in Ireland, which would happen here in a NY minute. (Ireland does not want its STV gone)

Oh so they just want "electoral reform" then.

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3. Huge numbers of candidates running for each electoral district (Ireland has exactly the same population as BC but something like 100,000 more voters vote!  So we seem to manage with the long ballots. which are not that long, by the way)

I have already clarified that I believe there will be upwards to 40 candidates running  per each super riding that have been proposed to have 5-7 spots.

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4.  Huge electoral districts means even less representation in rural areas and more domination from urban areas. (actually no, it means more competition so your mla will tour the area more and work hard for his voters so that they do not switch to another rep from his party next time. You will generally have a lib and a ndp mla among your reps so you will have one of your colour to go to and you will have one in government to go to too, a lot more choice, actually. )

Nonsense, what province do you live in again? Certainly can't be BC. The MLA's will stay in the area, read urban settings, where the majority of votes are that will dictate who wins and who keeps on keeping on. They will  compete for talking slots at Rotary and CoC, and such like, gatherings in the urban centres every wary. Moreover, you just supported my point (see bold) that it will pitt party member against party member, thereby creating more adversarial politics and less women participating.

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5.  Having to use computer voting, as there is no way hand counting will work given the amount of candidates there will be. This is a negative push away factor for several reasons. (Ireland uses hand counting, since the 1920's)

That is not what is propossed with our STV, it is computer voting with hand count possibility if needed.

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6.  Having 2-5  elected MLA's fighting with each other in any given electoral district is not my idea of representation for the masses. Too much room for dirty tricks, and less for actual riding work. (not really, their best way to keep being a rep is to do good work for their voters. Remember nettelton who stood up to campbell?  Or Korky evans who voted for stv last time?  It is not necessarly the end of the road if you cross your leader  in irish politics. More ideas get expressed within partys and independents often get elected if they are dumped unfairly from the party ticket)

You just argued against yourself and supported my point, as far as I am concerned. More ideas do not get expressed in Irish politics, or there would be women's voices being heard.

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7. Have 5 representatives from 1 party, as will be the case in some riding, is not my idea of fair representation. And it will happen of that there is no doubt.

(That is totally  untrue. You would have to have more than 85% support for one party on first preferences and PERFECT transfering of preferences on the following preferences. Every voter would have to be mailed a list of who to vote for first and how to vote the preferences  and follow it perfectly! and you would ALSO have to have 5 candidates for 5 seats. Anyway, in the real world they are only going to put up 3 or 4  candidates from any one party for 5 seats.

Funny, now you claim 85% whereas woodward above claimed 80%. While I understand it would only need 30-35% of the riding to vote for the exact same names for top spots.

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The horror that you discribe did happen in campbells first term under fptp. Remember?)

yep, so why change and spend all that money if the results would be the same?

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8. Not  going to go for the stupidity  that is embodied  in the acknowlegement that STV is perhaps not workable here in BC, but we can change it later to something else, thinking. It to me it is fools rushing in, plus a huge waste of tax payer's money. (In ireland they use it for euro elections. I think there are about 4 ridings about 13 seats and 4 million people.  Thats pretty big ridings!

Ya, and how is the EU  representation working out?

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9. Plus a few more personal biases that have been created because of the blind and/or short sighted supporters of it here, not meaning you Wilf either. But,  I figure if they think it is a good thing, then I need to run from it as fast as possible, and advise as many people as possible to vote NO too.

(An interesting way to make a decision, cutting off your nose, etc,  They tell me it is hurtful to self in the long term)

Now Brian, if you believed that stuff about cutting one's nose off, you would not be voting Green Party this election now would you?

When you see people who are foolish in respect to most all they post, stridently supporting STV, it does not give it good credentials to support, there is even less incentive when they and others make partisan reasons for supporting.

Remind, Ireland is not trying to get rid of stv.  

Mary Robinson.

One of the most famous political women in the world came through Irish STV to beat the old boys network.

She was non party (not even a member of any party when she ran for president)  and supported abortion and still beat the old boys. 

At the UN it took the usa veto on her nomination to kill her career there  and to get rid of her so presumably she was a danger to US interests

Please quit with the nonsense while you are ahead. Lies are lies and you should have the decency to retract the 30% one at very least.

Perhaps I misunderstand it then, as is see it only taking 30-35% of any given riding to vote exactly the same names for the the top 4 choices they want.

Are you denying Ireland has been asking for electoral reform?

One woman making "it" can happen under any political system, and one making it only in Ireland's STV does not make it a resounding testimony.

ETA cross posted with wilf will read his description.

remind wrote:

let's back up to the 16.7%,  this would  mean that  if 16.7% of riding voted for exactly the same top 4,  then 2 spots would go to the top 2 choices.

No, 16.7% of voters can only elect one MLA. That's the quota for a five-seater: the candidate is elected when he or she reaches quota. Their top choice would be elected. Their second, third and fourth choices would go no where.

Here's an easy way to explain the quota: in a single-seater with a preferential ballot it obviously takes 50% plus one to win. In a two-seater it takes 33.33% plus one. In a three-seater it takes 25% plus one. In a four-seater it takes 20% plus one. In a five-seater it takes 16.67% plus one. In a six-seater it takes 14.29% (one-seventh) plus one. In a seven-seater it takes 12.5% plus one.

remind wrote:

But if we had another 16.7% that voted for the 2nd and 3rd exact same choices of the first 16.7%, but as their first and second choices, we would still have the same 4 spots filled by 1 party.

No, their first choice would be elected, which your example assumes was the second choice of your first 16.7%.

remind wrote:

In a 5-7 seater in BC, there will be minimum 5 Liberals, 5 NDP, 5 GP . . .