STV is not good for Bill Tieleman

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.

Oh yes, let's vote for BC Liberals advice,  and pretend to be progressive, and pretend you are not telling people how to vote..

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.

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.

Thanks left turn, and am  voting No to STV on May 12th for a variety of reasons.

And you have every right to do so, but I still don't understand why.

Wilf, I think you're overanalyzing.

Party leaders, strategists and other senior insiders tend to what gets them the most power.  Party members, on the other hand, are more likely to take a more principled position.  The insiders prefer MMP because it keeps the power with the party and keeps it out of the hands of pesky voters.

There are senior BC NDP insiders who like FPTP because it occasionally gets them a majority government. This explains why the NDP membership endorsed proportional representation but it shows up nowhere on the website and isn't part of their platform.  So, Carole James ignores electoral reform for years and suddenly, when it looks like STV might win, starts talking about MMP. 

In terms of the Green Party, I understand that both Adrianne Carr and Jane Sterk strongly preferred MMP over STV.  I also believe that last time, the Green Party stayed neutral, same as the two big parties.

I would say that the Green Party has come to the realization that a half loaf is better than none.  STV in 2013 is better than maybe getting MMP is 2021.

Or maybe Sterk is listening to her constituency. Or maybe she's taking a principled stand.

Wilf:

 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 cfact.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Wilf but 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.

I have yet to hear an argument against BC-STV that is sound. When campaigning on the street, I'll meet some normal folks opposed to it (and are willing to talk to me further) and it always turns out that they actually don't fully understand it. The No campaign is frequently dishing out lies and distortions, doing their best to keep the public misinformed. It is dispicable, because they are doing the public a disservice, and they are doing it with our tax dollars. It is truly unfortunate that people like Tieleman and Schreck can continue spouting blatant lies without any repercussions.

The Yes campaign uses stats, figures, and historical precedence to support our stance. The No side uses scare-mongering and appeals to emotion, with a few cherry-picked stats that distort the whole picture. No matter what happens in this referendum, these party hacks have forever shown their lack of integrity and I hope this shadow follows them to the end of their days.

   - Niilo

Well Niilo, in fairness, it's hard to blame the no side for playing to their strengths.  They have a crappy product in the form of FPTP.  STV is great but not well understood.  Thanks to the government and NDP, they were given a huge headstart in the form of only needing 40% to win.  That means they don't have to sell anybody on anything, just spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. 

So, when you factor everything in, you sort of have to figure that a bunch of political insiders are probably going to run a smear campaign.  And if the unvarnished truth is inconvenient, that needn't be an obstacle.

Throughout the referendum campaign, Tieleman and Schreck have only attacked BC-STV.  They say nothing good about their antiquated First-Past-the-Post voting system.  I would hate to see these two bigwigs working in the premier's office if Carole James becomes premier.  Maybe that's one reason why they love First-Past-the-Post.  With it, these future backroom boys will exercise more power than the local MLAs who are supposed to represent their constituents.

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.

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.

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?

Here is a page that has some stats on women and politics in Ireland.
http://www.db-decision.de/CoRe/Ireland.htm
It would be hard to say how STV affected women's ability to be elected in 1929, because the public will to support women for political office at that time was very low (world-wide).

I am reading a great book ("The Politics of Voting" by Dennis Pilon) that looks at women's representation under various systems. Of note, the percentage of women elected in Ireland has been increasing since 1968 (the data in the book doesn't go earlier). In 1968, Ireland had about 2% women elected. Also of note, Canada is particularly high in comparison to the US and the UK (according to stats for the range of 1975 to 2005) - two other countries using FPTP. There seems to be a lot of public will in our country to finally give political equality to women.

However, before we get too cocky, Canada is ranked at 51st in the world (http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/map-world-womenpolitics/ [33]). The majority of countries that are beating us out are not using plurality (SMP / FPTP). They are using some form of proportional representation.

Australia also appears to have significant public will to elect women (even more than Canada). And, under STV (e.g., Australian Senate), they experience, in general, a much higher rate of electing women than their equivalant plurality elections.

Finally, it is convenient to point out Malta at 9% elected women, but what about India at 8%? India uses FPTP. Every system has its highs and lows. It's hard to take a single country across the world and apply its example to us, but if you look at the highs and lows world-wide, we have:

- FPTP: 8% (India) to 32% (South Australia)
- STV: 9% (Malta) to 41% (Australia)
- MMP: 6% (Albania) to 50% (Wales)
- Party List PR: 6% (Algeria) to high 40's (Sweden, Rwanda)

- Niilo

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.

So those Irish stats show even though there is a requirement for women within the party nomination, men are getting elected not women. A 15% increase since sufferage is not an increase to speak of.

Do not know how you can 30% would be women skinnydipper.

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.

I have mentioned on one of the boards that based on the www.trystv.ca results, about 30% of the winners would be women.  I know the poll is not scientific.  I do think that the people of BC will vote for women so long as women are interested in running.  As a member of Fair Vote Canada, I get to vote for members of the Fair Vote Canada national council.  Each year, I generally find that the percentage of women who get elected are close to the percentage of women who run as candidates for the national council.

If future BC-STV riding associations have nomination meetings using STV to select their candidates, I think that the percentage of women who get nominated will be similar to to the percentage of women who chose to run.  That's if a political party has no reserved positions for women.  Also in some urban ridings, with people trying to get nominated, they will try to sell memberships.  Under STV nomination meetings, there could be a diverse range of men and women from different ethnic backgrounds.  This is healthy for democracy.  Also, based on my experience in using STV ballots in Fair Vote Canada national council elections, I find myself being more open to candidates who are different from me because of gender, ethnicity, religion, race, ideology, and region.  The quality of the candidate matters more than the superficial characteristics.  STV lets me focus on the quality of candidates.

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.

How much money did the anti-FairVote disinformation campaign spend this time?

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.

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.

I've had this conversation with people before. The way STV works (at least, as it's set up in BC) is that every current riding will still have the power to elect 1 MLA within their amalgamated ridings. The reason for this is that the population in each is about equal. For example, Okanagan-Boundary, a BC-STV riding, will be a combination of one mainly-rural riding (Boundary-Similkameen), one small city (Penticton), and half a city (Kelowna-Westside). A friend who lives in a small town in the rural riding was concerned that all three MLA's would come from Kelowna. However, thanks to the threshold each candidate must reach to be elected, each of those areas, or sub-ridings, has the power to elect one MLA. So, if local representation truly is the top priority for voters (which it isn't, but that's another discussion), a candidate of some sort will be elected in each of those sub-ridings. In order for more than 1 MLA to be based in Kelowna-Westside, voters from the other two areas would have to help them get elected. And, if that's what the voters choose, than that doesn't seem so bad (assuming they had other options - which I think is a safe assumption).

I guess my knowledge of Federal ridings isn't as great. I think there exists some significant differences in population totals between some ridings, correct? If so, then a Federal STV electoral system would need to address these differences.

- Niilo

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).

I took the trouble to calculate the average number of candidates per seat in the Irish general election of 2007. It is 2.85.

Is BC going to be wildly different?

Malta does have slightly more candidates per seat than Ireland. They also have one of the world's highest turnout rates of around 94%, without compulsory voting.

The facts are reassuring. That's why Tieleman and Schreck stay so far away from them.

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.

Remind, I will put my responses in brackets below your points.

Wilf:

 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 cfact.

(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)

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. (Someone made that one up!  There are old boys networks everywhere, have you heard of Kinsella and bc rail? A former cabinet minister from the governing party went to Jaol for corruption in ireland a couple of years back. Does that happen here? I think another guy from the govening party went to prison too. Here, political office seems to confer immunity)

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

4.  Huge electoral districts, bigger than we already have, which 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. )

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)

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. (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)

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.

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

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!

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)