Single Transferable Vote

For anyone concerned with politics, this might be of interest:

A brief explanation for British Columbians contributed by Tim Burris.

On May 17th, British Columbians get to decide whether to keep our current electoral system (the "First-past-the-post" system, or FPTP), or switch to a model called the Single Transferable Vote, or STV. STV is currently used in Ireland, Malta, and Tasmania. Despite what its critics will tell you, STV really isn't all that complicated. There are just three things you need to understand: The constituencies, the voting, and the counting method. Instead of each constituency having a single representative (MLA), STV uses bigger, multi-member constituencies - as few as 2 for larger, rural ridings, or as many as 7 for densely populated areas like Vancouver.

The ballot looks basically the same as an FPTP ballot. The difference is, under STV, you rank the candidates in order of preference. If your vote is not used to elect your first choice candidate, it is "transferred" to your second choice.

Finally, here's a quick overview of how the ballots are counted. First, a quota - the number of votes needed for a candidate to be elected - is established, based on how many total votes were cast. Then, the first choices are counted. If no one meets the quota, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and his votes transferred, at full value, to the second choices marked on those ballots. If anyone does meet the quota they are declared elected. Then - and this is the tricky part - the number of votes that candidate has above the quota is counted, and those votes, called a surplus, are transferred to those voters' second choices. How do they decide which votes to transfer? Well, in the past, they would have simply chosen ballots at random, but the obvious problem there is that you'd get a different result each time you counted. So what they do is transfer all the ballots, but diminish their value so that all the votes become worth the same as the surplus.

Confused? Here's an example.

Eric, a candidate, needs 100 votes to be elected. He gets 200. To ensure that no votes are wasted, we need to transfer 100 of those votes. So, to be fair, we transfer all of them, but at half the value, so that 200 votes becomes 100 votes. This is where some people get confused, because this looks like you're counting some people's votes twice. You're actually not - you've just split individual votes. Eric only needs half of your vote to be elected, so half of that one vote goes to him, and the other half goes to your second choice - but it's still only one vote. This is why the system is called the Single Transferable Vote.

So, the real question is, what difference will it make? STV has been proven to provide more proportional representation - a party that gets 40% of the votes will get, roughly, 40% of the seats. In the last provincial election, the Liberals received 57% of the vote and about 97% of the seats, while the Green party received 12% of the vote and no seats. STV's proponents also claim that it reduces party discipline by making MLAs genuinely responsible to their constituents. Most importantly, it's more democratic. The results in any given constituency reflect the general preference of the people in that constituency far better than a single MLA, who only reflects the preference of the largest group of voters. A neat little side benefit is that it eliminates "strategic voting." There's no longer any reason to vote for anyone other than who you want to win, since your second choice will never be counted before your first - and if your first choice doesn't win, he'll be eliminated and your second choice will then be considered.

Perhaps the biggest thing that can be said in STV's favour is that Irish governments have tried to get rid of it more than once, and each time, the Irish people have voted to keep it.

Tim Burris is a student from Kamloops British Columbia.

The two things i like about this system are A) elected officials will be more representative of the people that voted them into office, and B) the times of strategic voting could be a thing of the past.

I know a great many people who voted "strategically" in the last federal election. Under this new system I have a suspicion that the NDP and Green Party would gain strength and the Liberals would lose a fair number of votes. Who knows though.