STV: Yes or No

The provincial election is happening in a few days. For someone who follows politics as closely as I do, I am actually very lukewarm about this election. To me, this is the ultimate testament of an election where you are trying to pick the least rotten apple among a bucket of smelly, decaying fruits. The Liberals’ track record on education and health care has been hideous, almost criminal in my opinion. The NDP is led by an incompetent leader who probably will drive B.C. deep into an economic recession. The Green Party meanwhile, is proposing a plan that is idealistic at best… To this point, I do not even know who I am going to vote for.

The more interesting part of the election, to me, is the referendum on the voting system. A referendum will ask the citizens of B.C. as to whether or not the provincial election should be decided through a process called “Single Transferrable Vote” (or STV for short). For those who do not know what STV is, and how it works, here’s an information page:

Understanding STV

Proponents of the STV frequently use the 2001 election results (above), where the Liberals won 58% of the popular vote, but earned 97% of the seats in the legislature to illustrate the ills of the current “first to the gate” electoral system (properly known as the single member plurality system). While the example is somewhat of an extreme case, it is true that, time after time, a party that is earning fewer than 50% of the province’s votes has practically complete say on all matters in the legislature. So, in that sense, I am a supporter of electoral reform.

Having said that, the STV currently proposed is not one that I will throw my support behind. There are several reasons:

1) It will create constituencies that are so big, that the elected representatives would not be able to represent the local needs of a community. British Columbia is a big province, even by saying “local representation” we are talking about a fairly big geographic region, especially in the interior and in the north. Eliminating the current constituencies, and replacing them with “super constituencies” would just foster elected representatives who would not listen to the voice of the citizens.

2) Unlike what the proponents of STV says, this system would NOT favour smaller parties to elect people into the legislature. Again, this has to do with the size of the constituencies. In order to campaign for a very large region, a lot of resources would be required. Smaller political parties would not have the resources to compete with the giant political parties. As a result, a local person well known in a community and well qualified for a position would have no chance of being elected.

3) Finally, the concept of transferring votes is just convoluted and confusing for the regular voter. Think about this: if I am Party A’s supporter, but don’t mind Party B too much, and absolutely despise Party C, but Party D is the party poised to win the election, with Party B running a somewhat close second… Strategic voting under the current system is simple: I vote for the candidate who will allow the “lesser of the two evils” to prevail. Not so under the STV, where my vote and how it gets split is dependent on factors such as margin of victory, total number of votes, etc… To an average citizen, this system may decrease their motivation to vote.

My conclusion: vote No to the STV. I’ll talk next time of a model that I feel would work.