The Committee for Voting Equity in BC  -  VotingBC.ca

On May 12th, 2009, BC voters will be asked which electoral system British Columbia should use to elect members to the Legislative Assembly: the existing electoral system (First-Past-the-Post) or the single transferable vote electoral system (BC-STV) proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

The Citizens' Assembly, appointed by the BC government, found that our current voting system under which a party that gets half the votes may well get virtually all the seats in the legislature, needs improvement.

After ten months of hearings and deliberations they recommended a change to an electoral system called the single transferable vote, and developed a version adapted to British Columbia called BC-STV. BC-STV was chosen by the Citizens' Assembly for accountability and fairness to voters through proportional representation (i.e. political parties getting seats in proportion to their share of the popular vote), enhanced local representation, greater choice and, as a consequence, better government. Details of their findings are available at: http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public

For voters, the change is simple and straightforward: Under BC-STV, voters still get one vote but instead of marking an “X” next to one candidate, voters rank as many candidates as they wish, in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, etc. When the votes are counted, a fraction of a voter's vote may be transferred to their lower choices if their top preferences either have a surplus of votes or have no chance of winning. After the election, as long as a person remembers how they voted they will know who their vote helped elect.

The method of counting the ballots with BC-STV is somewhat involved, requiring grade 4 arithmetic, but for those interested the details can be read in five or ten minutes at the government site: http://www.gov.bc.ca/referendum_info/popt/electoral_systems_first_past_the_post/counting_the_votes.htm

Besides the ranked ballot (which B.C. has not used since 1952), the other main feature of BC-STV is the grouping of ridings into multimember districts of 2 to 7 MLAs each, resulting in 20 districts rather than the present 85.  B.C. had multimember districts until 1991, which reportedly resulted in a higher proportion of women being elected.

Comments from Maxwell Anderson, Chair, Committee for Voting Equity in BC:

"The basic idea behind BC-STV is that it does a more reliable job of translating votes into seats in the legislature; it more accurately reflects the voters' intentions in electing MLAs than does our present voting system.

There have been long lists of pragmatic reasons given for voting in favour of BC-STV (e.g. www.stv.ca) and for voting against it (e.g. www.nostv.org). Why am I supporting BC-STV? Academic studies have shown that areas with modern, proportional voting systems like BC-STV have more stable government, faster economic growth, lower inflation, and lower unemployment. STV is a safe and sure voting system proven and used by about 7 national governments, 340 governmental bodies, 46 province-like governments, and most Canadian political parties. Here are three additional reasons:

1) To have better options available at elections we need to foster better political parties. How? We need to give parties smaller than the two biggest parties a fair chance to capture a few seats, because innovative ideas and competitive pressure come from small parties. They'll keep our big parties honest and hard working.

2) To make better decisions at election time we need to foster a more informed electorate. At present, about half the votes don't make a difference; they're 'wasted'. We need a system like BC-STV where almost every vote influences who gets elected, so we don't feel we may be wasting our time learning the issues and going out to vote. Then we'll take our responsibility to study the issues more seriously and we'll become better voters.

3) Government has become a complicated $40 billion enterprise. To avoid government blunders caused by premiers trying to make more decisions than they are capable of, the power of the premier's office, that is widely considered to have become excessive a couple of decades ago, needs to be dispersed among a team of competent leaders. How? By changing, at least part of the time, from single-party majority to coalition majority governments.

These are complicated issues, but the Citizens' Assembly members and political scientists are virtually unanimous that BC-STV is highly likely to bring about all three of these improvements over the long term.

Sincerely, Maxwell Anderson"

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Authorized by Committee for Voting Equity in BC; Maxwell Anderson: registered sponsor, 3137 W 42 Ave. Vancouver BC  V6N 3H1