Why you should defeat the Single Transferable Vote on May 12 - Bill Tieleman in Vancouver Sun

Complicated STV takes away MLA accountability

By Bill Tieleman, Special to the Vancouver Sun

May 5, 2009

British Columbians are faced with an even more important decision than who to vote for in the May 12 election -- because a referendum on electoral systems could have far more long-lasting effects on our province.

Voters must choose between our existing first-past-the-post electoral system and a proposed Single Transferable Vote.

No STV, the official opponent group, has been strongly urging British Columbians to reject this complex, obscure and confusing electoral system that would take away the local accountability and responsibility members of the legislative assembly owe to voters.

The reasons are many.

STV would create enormous ridings of up to seven MLAs and 350,000 people that would take away local accountability and responsibility of MLAs to voters.

British Columbia's 85 single-member ridings would shrink to just 20 under STV, meaning instead of having your own MLA in your current riding, you would have up to seven MLAs in a much bigger area.

In some cases that new STV riding is absurdly large -- Cariboo-Thompson STV riding would stretch from Quesnel all the way to the United States border!

And in other cases the STV ridings simply make no sense.

The proposed North Island-South Coast STV riding is bisected by Georgia Strait.

Voters in Sechelt, Gibsons, Powell River and the Sunshine Coast would share their MLAs with those in Tofino, Port Alberni, Port Hardy, Comox, Courtenay and other north Island communities.

Imagine the all-candidates meetings or party nominations -- or imagine how the riding's four MLAs would rationally divide their attention to the more than 200,000 people there stretching across the strait and hundreds of kilometres apart.

No longer would any of these ridings have their own MLA. Instead, voters would have a group of MLAs, none of whom would be responsible for any of the former single member ridings.

Nor would there be any guarantee of where MLA offices and staff would be located to deal with residents' issues.

And instead of local accountability, voters would get "government by committee" with a group of MLAs who may not come from parts of the riding or get along with other elected members.

Then there's STV's complicated "fractionalizing" of your vote using a mathematical "transfer value" formula that means you will never know where your vote really went.

The "weighted Gregory inclusive method" is how votes will be chopped up.

Here's just a partial sample of how the vote works, as described by the Citizens Assembly that recommended STV:

"If a candidate on the first count gains more than the minimum number of votes needed to be elected, the candidate is declared elected, and the number of votes in excess of the number of votes needed to be elected (the surplus) is recorded.

"All of the elected candidate's ballots are then re-examined and assigned to candidates not yet elected according to the second preferences marked on the ballots of those who gave a first preference vote to the elected candidate. These votes are allocated according to a 'transfer value.'

"The formula for the transfer value is . . . ."

There are 11 other steps involved in the count. And after that, the "Droop Quota" will determine how many votes a candidate needs to win election.

I am not making this up.

STV proponents say you can easily rank your choices 1,2,3 -- but the math involved shows you will have no idea what happened to your vote because there are far more mathematical combinations possible than there are 6/49 Lottery pick possibilities.

STV will also increase, not decrease, the power of political parties.

Candidates in large STV ridings would have to reach far more voters in a 350,000-person STV riding than under our current system with single member constituencies of about 50,000 people.

That makes candidates even more dependent on political parties to get their names and message out.

And smaller third parties and independents would face huge challenges trying to reach that many voters across large geographic areas.

Malta under STV has failed to elect a single third party candidate since the 1960s and no independent since the 1950s.

And Ireland, the only other country using STV as a national electoral system, features politics far nastier and more party-dominated than here.

Lastly, if STV proponents are correct, B.C. could have perpetual unstable minority and coalition governments -- a recipe for endless backroom deals between politicians and no leadership for our province.

Remember that if STV passes, B.C. will be stuck with it for a recommended minimum of three elections -- that's 12 years, running to 2025 -- before changes can be considered.

Vote to keep our current first-past-the-post system on May 12 -- and if you believe there are better systems work for that afterwards. Don't accept a disastrous STV system that won't serve British Columbia.

For more information: www.nostv.org

Bill Tieleman is president of No STV.