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Re: BCLocalNews.com - Community News Papers from across BC Online

ahodgson — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:29:05 -0000

There were multiple factors in Ontario, including the lack of public awareness (also a problem in BC in 2005) and the issue of party lists with placement determined by the parties rather than the voters (mentioned by battlefield3).

Fortunately, STV is the right reform for BC - it will give us fair results at a party level, but more importantly, it gives virtually all voters the ability to choose which MLA we want and doesn't give parties any particular say over which candidate we voters pick - there's no preferred spot on the list, so voters can knock out an incumbent and replace them with one of the other candidates from a given party without giving up on their preferred party. We will be able to vote honestly and effectively with STV. That's why BC voters supported STV by a strong majority of almost 57.7% (not the 56.4% quoted in the article - that might have been a result from early counts).

Re: BCLocalNews.com - Community News Papers from across BC Online

ahodgson — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:03:05 -0000

Tobin might as well say "if you want the chaos of Zimbabwe, go ahead and support your current system". Harris clearly has not heard of parliamentary democracies that use proportional representation such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, etc. In his view, these countries must be failing badly. Miller clearly hasn't read any of the literature (eg, by Arend Lipjhart) on the stability and economic performance of governments using proportional representation. Because there are no incentives to call early elections, governments last just as long or longer, and the resulting legislation is more moderate and stable because it comes from negotiations with a greater diversity of perspectives and so reflects the opinions of a true majority of the electorate. As for the need for good strong stable opposition parties, those of us in BC will remember how our current system virtually wiped out the NDP opposition in 2001 (and how the Conservatives federally were once reduced to two seats). This would never happen with a PR system.

If you accept the stated goals of these former premiers (lack of regional concentrations, stable policies, consistent and strong opposition) and think that accurate representation of the voters' expressed preferences is the starting point for modern representative democracy, you should vote for BC-STV.

Re: BCLocalNews.com - Community News Papers from across BC Online

ahodgson — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:46:32 -0000

Amen! If you agree that it's time for a system that puts voters' interests front and centre, help spread the word about next May's electoral reform referendum and join the BC-STV Campaign at stv.ca.

Re: Peace Arch News - Not down for the count

ahodgson — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:25:23 -0000

As someone who, somewhat coincidentally, is also an engineer and has read numerous books on electoral reform in general and STV in particular, along with dozens of academic articles on the subject, I believe that I am at least as qualified as Mr. Poole to comment on the STV voting system recommended nearly unanimously by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Unlike him, I have reached the opposite conclusion - I am convinced that BC-STV will go a long way towards correcting the worst flaws of our current voting system (such as the frustration of feeling that you have to vote for someone you don't really like to prevent the person you really dislike from winning, rather than voting for the candidate you actually support, the grossly distorted outcomes we've frequently seen, such as the 2001 election in which one party won all but two of the seats, even though opposition candidates won over 42% of the vote, and the futility of voting in ridings where it is often said that a trained seal wearing the right party label would win).

As a professor, I also have a strong interest in helping BC voters learn about this recommended improvement. I have therefore chosen to work with Fair Voting BC to advocate for adopting BC-STV, and I encourage all voters to visit stv.ca to learn more.

To briefly respond to some of Mr. Poole's accusations against STV:

1. "(STV) actually benefits no one, compared to what we have now,” Mr. Poole is right that STV conveys much less PARTISAN advantage than our current system does. Our current system tends to give the leading party a seat bonus of (on average) about 20% of the seats in the legislature (ie, a party with 46% of the vote has, on average, won 66% of the seats), tends to give the second place party fewer seats than they would expect based on their share of the popular vote (as mentioned above, in 2001 the NDP won only 2 seats), and tends to give other parties such as the Greens no seats at all, even if they win 150,000 votes province-wide.

In contrast, STV will produce much fairer outcomes. In Ireland (one of several Commonwealth countries using STV at the national, state or civic level - others include Malta, Australia, India, Scotland, New Zealand and the USA), the average difference between vote share and seat share for the leading party is under 3.5%, compared to about 20% for BC.

I would therefore agree that STV benefits no PARTY (in the sense of giving them a substantial unfair advantage, the way our current system does), but it clearly benefits VOTERS, because, to a much greater extent than we do with our current system, we will get the MLAs we vote for.

2. “What it’s promoted as is proportional representation; it’s not." Mr. Poole is playing an obscure semantic game here. STV is routinely classified by political scientists and elections organizations (see the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance's website - www.idea.int) as a proportional representation system. With STV, candidates get elected when they earn a certain number of votes (about 17,000, on average, in the BC recommendation). Seats are therefore won in fairly direct proportion to the number of votes received.

STV is also candidate-centred, so voters can express preferences for candidates from different parties; it is not as party-centric as the kind of pure party-list systems other countries such as Israel use. In my view, the Citizens' Assembly rightly understood that such systems do not match BC voters' values.

3. "STV rewards small parties and independents with concentrated support in a riding. It discriminates against widespread support.” Again, Mr. Poole is being disingenuous here. STV strikes a balance between two values that are strongly held by BC voters - the desire for fair outcomes and for identifiable local representatives. With STV, therefore, we will have 20 mini-regions, each electing between 2 and 7 MLAs. In Surrey, we will have 9 MLAs elected from two districts - 5 in Surrey North and 4 in Surrey South. To win, a candidate will need a minimum of 17% of the vote in Surrey North, 20% in Surrey South.

It is therefore true that a very small party with only about 5% support will likely not be able to elect a representative, but one which comes closer to 15% support is quite likely to win. This is actually what most BC voters want - for the most part, we don't want small single-issue parties to win because this will produce the problems we see in places like Israel. Instead, we want full-fledged multi-issue parties to emerge. For that, we need some kind of threshold. STV offers a natural threshold of about 12.5% in a 7 seat district, and most BC voters find this perfectly acceptable. Certainly the Green party is supportive - they feel that they will be able to succeed under BC-STV.

Independents also frequently get elected under STV in Ireland - in an average election, approximately a dozen independents are elected to the 166-seat legislature there. In BC, we haven't had one since the 1940s.

Finally, I note that Mr. Poole is not claiming that our current system is any better for smaller parties or independents than STV - our current system is in fact far worse, so if he's actually concerned about improving opportunities for smaller parties and independents, he should be advocating for BC-STV.

Re: Ladysmith Chronicle - Just say 'No' to STV

ahodgson — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:29:54 -0000

I caution voters to look carefully for the truth because STV opponents use classic tactics of misdirection and misinformation to prevent people from finding out what will really happen if we adopt BC-STV as recommended nearly unanimously (95%) by our Citizens' Assembly. Huntley has already pointed out one lie - Tieleman (STV opponent) claims that the more you know about STV, the less likely you are to vote for it. Prof. Cutler has published research clearly establishing the opposite - the more voters know about STV, the more likely they are to favour it. Proponents are therefore eager to have voters look very carefully at how STV works. Tieleman cannot be unaware of this research as proponents have pointed it out to him on previous occasions. He is therefore saying things that he knows to be false.

Tieleman's second lie or near-lie (misdirection at best) is his statement that STV opponents "don’t feel it is, in any way, a real proportional representation system.” What they feel is irrelevant. Actual data from the eminent political scientist Arend Lijphart from Yale and the University of California, San Diego, shows that STV is among the most proportional of all voting systems (see http://stv.ca/proportionality for a plot that shows that countries using STV (Malta and Ireland) have disproportionality scores of 2.5% and 3.5%, respectively. This is in line with Sweden, Austria, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and other countries widely acknowledged to have proportional representation systems, and a far cry better than Canada federally at 12% and BC provincially at 18% (not shown on plot). Despite several invitations to publicly acknowledge this fact, neither of the main STV opponents (Bill Tieleman and David Schreck, both former NDP party insiders) has ever done so and have continued making false and misleading claims. In any case, Tieleman and Schreck are both on record as strongly opposing increased proportionality in our voting system. Voters who believe that parties should win seats in reasonable proportion to their share of the popular vote should therefore be extremely cautious when they hear STV opponents discussing proportionality because the opponents are rarely candid about their motives.

Tielemans' third deceit is his claim that all MLAs 'could' come solely from the Nanaimo area. While theoretically possible, this is akin to saying that it's possible that a candidate could win with one vote with our current voting system - true if only one person voted, but highly unlikely. In practice, this is not what happens in places where STV is used and where people care about local representation. See http://tinyurl.com/d4steq for a map of a number of the rural Irish districts and note the wide geographic dispersion of the representatives. STV gives voters what they want. If a candidate doesn't campaign outside Nanaimo, voters outside Nanaimo have the power to punish that candidate. What we would most likely expect, given that the NDP won about 46% of the vote in the proposed mid-Island district in 2005, the Liberals 42% and the Greens 9%, and given that every 20% of the vote would be enough to win a seat, would be that both the Liberals and the NDP would each win two seats. The Greens could at some point become competitive because voters would be free to express their true preferences with STV, so their actual support is likely higher than the 9% they posted when voters felt that telling the truth on their ballot was a waste of their vote. If two NDP and two Liberal MLAs were elected, it's almost certain that one MLA from each party would end up effectively representing the north part of the district (Nanaimo-Parksville-Qualicum) and the other the southern part (Cowichan Valley, extending up towards Nanaimo). This would give almost everyone in the mid-Island an MLA they support, coupled with tight geographic representation.

Given Tieleman's highly speculative deduction, voters should take his claim of decreased local accountability with a very large grain of salt. With our current voting system, only 38% of voters in 2005 fully determined the outcome in the mid-Island region - the other 62% could have stayed home for all the effect they had on the election's outcome. With STV, at least 80% of voters will influence the outcome. Voters will understand that this doubling of the power of their vote will certainly affect how responsive MLAs will be to their constituents and their local issues.

Finally, Tieleman describes the FPTP supporters side as a 'United Nations' of politics. In actuality, the opponents are a small group of party insiders affiliated with the two major parties. To our knowledge, they have no current Green party members and no more than a handful of ordinary, non-partisan citizens. In contrast, STV proponents include virtually all of the non-partisan members of the Citizens' Assembly, and hundreds to thousands of other ordinary BC citizens from all political parties including the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Greens, as well as many non-partisans. Ordinary BC voters are overwhelmingly in favour of STV and voted 58-42 in favour last time, with half of the no voters saying the main reason they voted against STV was that they hadn't heard much or anything about it; only a fifth of the no voters actually defended our current voting system. This year, let's make sure that the 92% of BC voters who think that our current system needs some serious updating and improvement learn as much as possible about BC-STV and vote in favour of the change recommended nearly unanimously by our Citizens' Assembly. 58% was a strong vote of confidence in 2005; let's say yes again in 2009, but even louder and more clearly this time.

Re: Victoria News - Letters for March 20

ahodgson — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:47:38 -0000

It seems E. Kaller misunderstands how STV works. If one voter's second choice is taken into account and another voter's is not, this doesn't mean that the first voter's vote is worth more. Think of your vote as being worth a dollar. With STV, a candidate is elected if they win a certain number of 'dollars' - on average, about 17,000. Your second choice is taken into account under two circumstances:

(1) If your first choice is not elected. In this case, your first choice is not elected, so your 'dollar' (vote) is not spent on your first choice; it's only spent on people who get elected. Your first choice was eliminated, so, rather than throwing your vote out as our current system does, your vote then goes on at full value to your second choice.

(2) If your first choice is quite popular and receives more votes ('dollars') than they need to get elected. Imagine that your first choice is someone so popular that they received 34,000 votes. These 34,000 voters actually deserve to elect two MLAs, but they all voted for the same person as their top choice. In this case, each voter spends half of their vote (50c) on their top choice, and then gives the remaining 50c to their second choice.

In both cases, all voters start out with a vote worth the same amount - this is in full accord with the 'one person, one vote' principle. Kaller is simply wrong to assert that some ballots end up being worth more than one ballot.

Kaller's other points are somewhat obscure. It's true that all candidates with enough support are declared elected before losers are eliminated. So what? This seems eminently logical. If a candidate is popular enough to be elected, they should be.

Reiter is incorrect to assert that no other systems have been advanced. The Citizens' Assembly considered numerous voting systems and decided that STV best matched the values of BC voters. STV has been the most commonly adopted and recommended voting system around the world in the past decade, having been adopted or recommended in Scotland (Local councils 2007; health boards 2009), Australia (state of Victoria 2006), various US and New Zealand cities and NZ health boards, Canada (besides BC, Harper proposed it for electing Senators), Wales, and the UK.

Reiter is clearly unclear on the concept if he or she thinks that STV will produce MLAs from 40 different parties. With an effective threshold of 12.5%, I would expect that, in line with most other jurisdictions using STV, we would end up with MLAs from 3 or 4 parties.

Amon also engages in wild speculation unsupported by evidence. Why in the world would local constituency associations cede nomination power to the central party when STV gives them a chance to put their recommended candidate directly to the people? Sure, the party might want to centralize control, but they already want to do that (and frequently act to do so); STV gives constituency associations more power to resist such attempts.

Amon also ignores the academic literature that says that consensus democracies (ie, democracies that use fair voting systems such as STV) have equally stable or more stable governments and public policies, increased voter satisfaction and less labour strife. There's nothing undemocratic about giving 15% of the population a representative they've chosen - Amon somehow implies that this MLA would be elected to represent the other 85% of the voters, but that's not the case - those 85% of the voters will choose 5 other MLAs to represent them. What is undemocratic is only allowing voters to express one preference and thereby forcing them to play a game with their vote in which they have to choose between voting honestly (allowing the person they like least to win) and voting for someone they don't really like simply because they're not as bad as the one they fear might otherwise win. Why in the world wouldn't we prefer a system like STV which encourages voters to be honest when they vote and which makes the vote of almost every voter effective in producing the representation they choose?

Re: Vernon Morning Star - Proponent of voting change speaks up

ahodgson — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:53:38 -0000

Me as voter: "Ooh. STV is non-monotonic. That sounds scary. I sure don't want a non-monotonic voting system. Uh uh. No way." Aside to knowledgeable friend: "Psst! Would non-monotonicity really matter?"

Well-informed friend: "Not really. All voting systems have flaws - some major, some minor. For example, our current voting system (first past the post, or FPTP) completely fails three of the four main criteria that are usually considered to be markers of a fair and reasonable voting system:

1. Universality - the complete preferences of all voters should be taken into account. FPTP doesn't let voters say what they really think.

2. Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives - a voter's opinion about a third candidate should not affect the outcome of a matchup between the first two. With FPTP, if a voter honestly expresses their preference for a third candidate who's not one of the two leaders, their opinion about which of the two leaders should win is ignored.

3. Citizen sovereignty - it should be possible to figure out which candidate is most preferred by all the citizens. Since FPTP doesn't allow voters to express their full preferences, we simply can't find out who really should have won.

So FPTP is non-universal, gives results which change with the introduction of irrelevant alternatives, and violates citizen sovereignty. All these flaws are generally considered very serious."

Me again: "But David Schreck says non-monotonicity is really bad. He's studied political science. Surely he knows what he's talking about and is not trying to misdirect us."

Well-informed friend again: "In practice, non-monotonicity is considered a minor flaw in STV that is practically impossible to take advantage of. What it really means is that there's a technical possibility for a voter to slightly improve their preferred candidate's chances of winning by very accurately predicting what at least two other groups of voters will do in a circumstance in which the preferred candidates of these two other groups of voters are in a virtual tie where one of them is destined to be eliminated. The strategy consists of lying about your personal favourite, elevating one of these other candidates who's likely to lose above your own favourite. Since STV is so effective at giving the vast majority of voters the representative they prefer, this carries the very real risk of actually electing the person you've falsely declared to be your favourite, so most political scientists recommend simply being honest with your ballot."

Me, in conclusion: "So, FPTP violates three of the four criteria in serious and significant ways, and STV technically fails the fourth one in a way that's so difficult to exploit that you might as well not bother to try. Seems pretty clear to me that STV is better."

Re: Vernon Morning Star - Proponent of voting change speaks up

ahodgson — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:57:29 -0000

Re: Western Australia: The previous Labour government opted to enact STV for local council elections in Western Australia because it recognized that STV would "more democratically represent the views of the majority of electors". Nonetheless, there was significant opposition to this on the part of the local councillors themselves. The recently elected Liberal/National state government (interestingly, a minority government elected under First Past the Post, in which the Liberal party won 4 fewer seats in the 59 seat house than the Labour party, despite winning 3% MORE of the vote, and the Nationals won 4 seats on under 5% of the vote while the Greens won no seats despite winning 12% of the vote - just a typical senseless result with FPTP) did bow to this pressure from those with the greatest self-interest in the outcome. A close examination of the 2007 electoral results (eg, in the major city of Perth) shows that STV did exactly what it was supposed to - ensure that each quarter of the population could elect a councillor they chose, regardless of who the other voters chose.

Re: Vernon Morning Star - Proponent of voting change speaks up

ahodgson — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:20:51 -0000

Incidentally, I looked up the mathematics paper that David Schreck cites to make his case about the potential non-monotonicity of STV. The author states, after showing a highly contrived example to illustrate the theoretical possibility of a non-monotonic result, "We do not know if anything like this has ever happened in Ireland" (see http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/.... In other words, Schreck has no evidence that this has ever happened, let alone that it's a problem worth being concerned about.

Re: Ladysmith Chronicle - Just say 'No' to STV

ahodgson — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:47:53 -0000

Nice image Bill, especially coming from a professional spinmeister. Once again with the misdirection. First of all, why the emphasis on national governments? Last time I checked, BC was not an independent nation. As to the answer, it's fairly obvious. STV serves voters, not politicians. How often do voters actually get to choose their voting system? In almost every situation in which voters have been offered STV, they've gone for it - BC in 2005 and numerous cities in the USA and New Zealand. STV has also been recently adopted in Scotland for local council elections and in the Australian state of Victoria, and it's been recommended for many other jurisdictions by the commissions called to investigate options. An all-party committee in Ireland concluded a few years ago that its citizens wouldn't countenance them taking away the voting choice they currently have, so opted not to try.

I will acknowledge that STV is not as party-proportional as a full-out list system like they have in Israel or the Netherlands. The disproportionality value for the latter is likely to be about 1-2, whereas STV is more likely to be 2.5-3.5, like most MMP countries, and way less than the values of 12-18 or more we experience in Canada. Will you acknowledge this? Again with the refusal to acknowledge documented facts. Re: your misdirection again - there is better proportionality in a 2 member STV riding than in a single member FPTP district. Why are you confusing a single district with the whole province?

I agree that candidates will look for votes in the major centres, but unlike FPTP, they can't rely on getting elected on the basis of votes there alone - they need the votes from the outlying areas, and STV will significantly reward those candidates who pay attention to the smaller places, in contrast to FPTP where these places can be effectively ignored. Look at Prince George right now - all three MLAs live in the city. If this is what you're really so afraid of, it couldn't possibly be worse with STV even if you're right (which I don't acknowledge).

STV has not created the two party system in Malta - voters there have not supported any other parties for a variety of other reasons. In BC, we've generally only elected people from small different parties during periods of collapse - in contrast, STV would give smaller parties a solid basis from which to grow and develop.

Finally, Andrea is a former, not a current, Green Party member. I also understand that Stuart has not been a member of the provincial Green party for several years; certainly the other 99.999% of Green party members are taking the opposite view on this.

Re: Invermere Valley Echo - Provincial process to change voting system

ahodgson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:47:07 -0000

Another hit and run comment by David Schreck. Let's set the record straight:

1. Schreck is being intentionally deceptive about the issue of proportionality. Even with 2 seat districts (there's only going to be one of these - in the Peace region), STV would be more proportional than our current system (remember the Liberals winning 97% of the seats on 57.6% of the vote in 2001?). Neither Schreck nor Tieleman has ever publicly acknowledged what is manifestly true - that STV is far more proportional than our current system. The eminent political scientist, Arend Lijphart from the University of California at San Diego has clearly shown how proportional STV is (see http://www.aph.gov.au/senat... for the actual data) - STV has a 'disproportionality' value in the range of 2.5-3.5%, very similar to many party-list proportional and mixed member proportional systems, and far lower than the 12-18% range that our current system produces. The reason Schreck and Tieleman won't acknowledge that STV is far more proportional than FPTP is because they know that 76% of British Columbians support increased proportionality but they don't, and so want to convey the impression that STV is not proportional. Check out the data and make up your own mind.

2. Incumbency rates under FPTP and STV are generally quite similar (about 70%), but this masks some significant differences. With FPTP, the majority of seats are very safe for the incumbents as they face no serious challenge either from candidates from other parties or from their own party; the incumbents who are at risk are those in the relatively few competitive ridings where the two leading parties have approximately equal support. With STV, there is always a real challenge both from other parties AND from voters who support a given party have the ability to decide which candidates from their preferred party win the seats that that party has enough support to win. If sitting representatives win re-election under STV, it's because the voters actually support them - ie, that they're perceived by those who support them to be doing a good job of representation. Since STV is very responsive to shifts in support, it would be easy for their supporters to shift their support to another candidate from the same party, if they so choose.

3. BC-STV does not 'eliminte' [sic] local representation - it enhances it. With STV, voters can finally have an MLA representing their geographic locale who shares their political perspective. This is what local representation really means. How can an MLA meaningfully represent you if you don't support them? Such a person is actually acting against your interests. The northern and rural members of the Citizens' Assembly recognized this truth and chose accordingly.

4. The cost of campaigns in Ireland is about half what it is in BC on a population-weighted basis.

5. Re: non-monotonicity - I suggest readers check out my "Dialogue on Non-Monotonicity" at http://www.straight.com/art... where I demonstrate that our current voting system violates three of the four criteria that are normally considered essential for a fair voting system to satisfy, while non-monotonicity is essentially a non-issue - to the knowledge of the authority Schreck cites, the situation Schreck purports to be concerned about has never occurred, and is certainly not considered by anyone to be a serious practical concern with STV. Schreck is simply using this scary-sounding technical term to sow doubt. It's as if I used a term such as "susceptibility to dictatorship" to describe how our current voting system could potentially give all power to a party based on them earning a single vote in every riding - this is technically true (if only one person voted), but it would never happen, so it's not really an issue.

6. Schreck is also highly selective in saying that only two countries have adopted STV. First, Australia and India both use STV at the national level for their upper houses. Second, many jurisdictions use it subnationally. Third, STV has been the most frequently adopted electoral system over the past decade. Fourth, when put to referendum, STV has almost always won. Fifth, the political scientist David Farrell explains why STV has not been more frequently adopted: "political parties have naturally sought electoral systems which preserve rather than diminish their power over the electorate. As a quintessential candidate-based system, STV does not serve this purpose." (Farrell, 1996, Political Studies, vol 44, pp 24-43. Farrell also quotes Arend Lijphart (see above): "In general, strong PR advocates tend to be strongly in favor of the STV form of PR. It is ironic that list PR, which is the most common electoral system in Western democracies, does not have any enthusiastic champions. STV may be the theoretically optimal
form of PR in the opinion of the academics. but, in practice, list PR is more attractive to established political
parties and hence much more widely used." In short, the politicians like systems which centralize power in the party structures and dislike STV because it shifts power more towards the voter. In contrast to Schreck, I don't consider this a failing of STV, but a strength.

Re: BCLocalNews.com - Commentary: New system won’t fix politics

ahodgson — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:23:48 -0000

Yeah, some of those constituencies are huge! About as big as a federal riding (and with two or three MLAs rather than a single federal MP). Remember, the number of MLAs in each small region of the province is unchanged with STV. Schreck is trying to imply that STV districts get less representation, but each region's influence in the legislature is the same under both systems (except that with STV, no region will ever likely be left out of government and a much higher proportion of voters will have an MLA who shares their views - about 90% with STV vs about 50% with our current system). Also remember that nearly all the northern and rural members of the Citizens' Assembly felt that it was better to have two or three MLAs representing their area so that each voter could effectively choose someone they supported than to have three independent fiefdoms each represented by an MLA only supported by half the voters.

Re: incumbency rates - Moncrief (Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol 19(1), pp 33-48, 1994) shows that the average incumbency rate in Canadian provinces under our FPTP system is 77% (figures for BC range from about 60-92% in different elections). That's no different from STV at about 80%. The big difference is that in Ireland, the voters can control which sitting members lose - in BC, the only ones who lose are those in marginal seats where a small shift in party support levels might take them out; the ones in safe seats rarely lose. In Ireland, no seat is safe - any member can be taken out by another candidate from their own party, even if the overall party preferences don't shift enough to change the overall seat balance.

Schreck greatly exaggerates the counting time - Neal Hall did a great article in the Vancouver Sun (http://www.vancouversun.com... in which he describes how the Irish turn the 1-2 day vote counting process into a pub game - it's a great opportunity to build interest in and commitment to their democratic institutions.

Schreck knows that campaigning under STV is half the cost it is here on a population-weighted basis. The Green Party has stated that they expect to be much more successful under STV because they can target their expenditures more effectively to gain votes. Independents have a much better shot at winning under STV - BC hasn't elected one since 1949, whereas Ireland regularly elects them (about 25 or more over the past three elections).

Nominations would likely be done on a regional level - parties would certainly want to decide how many candidates to run for strategic reasons, but regional nomination allows for the key mechanism that enhances increased gender and ethnic diversity - multimember slates. It's hard to offer diversity if you're limited to one candidate. If you're offering three or four, you can offer a mixed slate of men and women, older and younger, representatives of different ethnic communities. This enables a party to show the breadth of its appeal and allows them to hook in the votes of different constituencies within the region. This is likely to prove far less divisive than the NDP's recent policy of excluding male candidates from some ridings.

I don't know what Schreck is smoking when he says that proponents claim that STV will solve all our political problems. I do know that staying with the status quo gives us no new tools to deal with the glaring problems we do face, while STV will shift power into the hands of the voter and ensure that electoral outcomes will reflect how we actually vote. What we do then is up to us.

Re: BCLocalNews.com - ELECTIONS BC Changing they way citizens vote

ahodgson — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:33:04 -0000

I appreciate Bill's comments. I too am greatly concerned about the concentration of power in the premier's office and the difficulties under our current system of holding the government to account once elected. However, I think BC-STV will help voters achieve this.

First of all, with STV, governments won't win seats significantly out of proportion to their share of the popular vote. This means that the leading party won't win a majority government almost all the time, the way they do now (only once in the past 16 elections has a government ever actually received more than 50% of the popular vote, but 15 times have we had a 'majority' government), though they will win one when the voters give them a true majority of the vote (eg, in the 2001 election when the Liberals won 57.6% of the votes - with STV, they probably would have won at least this share of the seats). In addition, it is more common than not for the leading party to have close to 50% of the vote (ie, from 45-49% - this has happened 9 times in the past 16 elections). Because of transfers from smaller parties and independents that don't win enough support to be elected, a party with 45-49% of the vote could quite possibly end up with a bare majority of seats. In principle, they could then rule as a majority, but because the opposition will be stronger, they will be under closer scrutiny. In addition, opposition members in the government members' home districts will continuously be raising policy issues in the local press and forcing the local government members to respond. Since seats everywhere will be in play, the government members will have a stronger incentive to stand up for their constituents concerns in the legislature; if they don't, the threat of being able to kick them out next time is very real.

Re: Bill's other concern that STV won't change representation in the smaller districts - I have looked carefully at the numbers and would respectfully disagree. I suspect that we'll see some interesting contests in these two and three seat districts. Consider the Peace. In 2005, the Liberals won both ridings with about 58-59% of the vote. With STV, it will take one third of the vote to win a seat, so the Liberals are virtually guaranteed to win one of those seats, but the second one becomes quite competitive. After using their first 33% to win the first seat (and Liberal supporters will have decided which of the two Liberal candidates gets that first seat), the Liberal base will have another 25-26% towards the second seat (assuming the same levels of party support as before), but the NDP will also have about 30% towards that seat. This makes it highly competitive. Neither the Liberals nor the NDP could take that second seat for granted - both would be working very hard to persuade Peace Region voters that they deserve it.

The situation is equally interesting in the Prince George region - the Liberals got about 48% of the vote last time (and Paul Nettleton won another 4-5%), the NDP got 36%, and the Greens won 8%. With three seats, it takes 25% of the vote to win. This means that the Liberals and the NDP are each virtually certain to win one seat (whereas right now the Liberals have all three), but after deciding those two seats, the Liberals would have 23% towards a second seat, but the NDP and the Greens combined would have 19%, so they could mount a challenge. It would likely go to the Liberals, but if the current balance shifted in future, that last seat would come into play again.

Finally, in the Northwest, another 3-seat district, the NDP had 47% of the vote to the Liberal's 44% and the Green's 6%. With our current system, the three contests are closely balanced and it's entirely possible that all three seats could go one way or the other in any given election. With STV, both the Liberals and the NDP are clearly above the 25% threshold, so they'd each quite reliably win one seat, with the supporters of each party determining which candidate wins that seat (ie, which candidate is most popular with their own party's supporters). The third seat is clearly in play - the Liberals would have 19% towards the 25% needed, and the NDP would have 22% towards it. Each would be reaching out to the Green party supporters to cast their second preferences their way.

In summary, right now the Liberals have all five seats in the PG area and the Peace region, while the NDP have 2 of 3 in the NW (and came fairly close to taking all three). This regional imbalance would end under STV - only in the Peace is it conceivable that there wouldn't be representation by both major parties, and even there the second seat would be very much in play.

The other thing to remember is that there are two kinds of representation that MLAs are responsible for - constituency issues and policy issues. We have a strong tradition of non-partisan constituency service, and I have no doubt that that would continue under STV. In fact, Ireland, which also uses STV, is renowned for the extent to which their representatives pay attention to their constituents. I suspect Bill is right that in three or four seat districts, MLAs from the same party (any party that elects two or more) would divide up constituency responsibilities on a geographic basis - this happens in Ireland. In any case, the number of MLAs is unchanged under STV, so there should be no change in the resources available for providing constituency services - voters will simply have more choice about who to approach.

The bonus of STV, however, is that we will gain dramatically improved policy representation. We all recognize that however capable a politician is in providing non-partisan constituency representation, that MLA cannot, does not and will not provide policy input that reflects the views of constituents with different political views than their own. STV allows a voter the freedom to elect a local representative who will reflect their views. This accuracy of representation and identification with particular MLAs is what will produce stronger links between voters and their MLAs under STV.

Re: Houston Today - MLA ready to start 'bucket list'

ahodgson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:13:32 -0000

The NDP member "wouldn't have a lot to do"? You mean, other than representing and giving a voice in the legislature to the views of the 50% or so of the district that didn't vote for the other main party? You can rest assured that anyone unhappy with the government of the day will be contacting the local representative of the other party to make sure their concerns get articulated.

Re: Surrey Leader - Smarties, pucks fly in STV battle

ahodgson — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:27:47 -0000

Redekop's hockey analogy is clever but deeply flawed. All that really needs to be said in response is that elections are not hockey games. Alternatively, one could draw the opposite conclusion from looking at how a game winner is determined - all we look at is the total number of points, not which team won the most periods.

More to the point, I don't think we should be looking at elections as a means to crown a winner who will reign uninterrupted for the next four years. Rather, I think elections should be about choosing people to represent us in the discussions of public policy that will be held in the legislature over the next four years.

If we don't accept that we should have a truly representative government, if we don't see any useful role for the opposition in creating legislation, why do we bother electing any of them in the first place? If all policy is created in the backrooms of the governing party (or even simply the premier's office), why do we bother electing representatives at all? We should have a single vote - "Which premier do you want to run government?" The winner would then recruit as many fellow party members as they want to help them work out the legislation, but we voters wouldn't need any say in who gets picked. It's not like we have any choice over the local party member under our current system - we just have to take whichever candidate the party puts forward.

In contrast, if we're serious about elections being about representation, about elections being the start of a legislative conversation and not the end, then we need to start by building a firm foundation of accurate representation. Each voter must have the ability to choose, as much as possible, the specific candidate they want to represent them in the legislature. STV does this - it offers each of us a choice not only between parties, but between candidates of the same party. In this way, voters are put back in the driver's seat - we can control the direction of our preferred party by choosing which candidates from that party we most support.

Because BC-STV accurately translates votes into seats, it takes voters' preferences seriously. It therefore provides a solid foundation for responsible and responsive government, and that's why I'll be supporting the non-partisan Citizens' Assembly who wisely recommended BC-STV by a near-unanimous margin of 95% to 5%.

Re: South Delta Leader - Delta-South candidates square off

ahodgson — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:36:14 -0000

I'd be very interested in knowing what Huntington's remaining concerns are. I've appreciated her arguments on the need for independent voices – "Delta has to be able to hear its own voice in Victoria. It’s gone a long time without hearing one single comment or public discussion on the issues affecting it. … People have to be able to see that their representative is talking to Victoria and not vice versa. ... We [Vicki Huntington and David Marley, a former director with Fair Voting BC and a strong advocate for BC-STV] feel that the partisan candidate in Victoria, in Ottawa have basically become meaningless. They’ve become messengers for the party. They’ve become salesmen for a vote. I’ve been saying for quite some time that, in my opinion, especially in this province, the vote has become a commodity, and once you’ve put your ‘X’ on that line they can turn around and ignore you and [they] do. The ability and interest in listening to the people and in serving the people disappeared about 6 or 7 years ago.” BC-STV makes it much more possible for independents to be elected because, in contrast to our current voting system, you don't have to be tied to the largest party in an area to be elected - as long as you can persuade a seat's worth of voters to support you (about 17,000 on average), you can be elected regardless of how other voters vote.

I also don't understand how someone can support proportional representation and not support BC-STV. Any form of proportional representation requires that more than one MLA take responsibility for representing a particular region - this is the only way that two neighbours with differing political views can possibly each have a representative they support. Mixed Member Proportional, the system that the NDP officially supports, solves that in one way - it roughly doubles the size of each single member riding (eg, merging Delta North and Delta South) and elects an MLA from the largest party in that doubled riding; independents stand even less of a chance of being elected in these larger ridings. It then also creates much larger regions than STV has ever contemplated - in Ontario, the proposal was to make the entire province a single riding - and uses a party vote to determine how many members of the various parties are elected off the party lists. These list MLAs would not necessarily have any particular regional connection or responsibilities (though such could potentially be assigned in some way - eg, by making smaller regions such as those that BC-STV uses). Not surprisingly, voters in Canada have seen MMP proposals as a means of increasing party control and shifting the loyalties of MLAs further from the voters and closer to the parties; they turned MMP down, voting only 36-37% in favour in both PEI and Ontario.

In contrast, BC-STV keeps all MLAs locally grounded. Richmond-Delta would continue to have 5 MLAs. If BC followed Irish or Australian patterns, the different MLAs elected from a single party would each take on a particular area of geographic responsibility (eg, one Liberal MLA might cover Delta, while another one or two (if 3 were elected) would cover Richmond. This is very similar to what would happen with MMP. The other MLAs would respond primarily to the smaller group of their supporters who are distributed across both communities, but would still be strongly attached to Richmond-Delta. That is, they would be even more locally-attached than list members would be under MMP. I therefore don't understand what advantages Athaide thinks MMP has over BC-STV, which was carefully designed to address the concerns of BC voters from throughout the province. I also confess that I'm a bit sceptical - the NDP did not implement proportional representation when it had the opportunity, so I think that this is the best chance we'll have to get proportional representation implemented.

At least Oppal has the courage of his convictions - he doesn't think voters who represent minority perspectives are entitled to representation in the legislature; instead, he prefers to concentrate power in the hands of one or two large parties and avoid the need to engage in consensus-building processes in the legislature. I don't agree with his position, but at least it's consistent. Of course, the Citizens' Assembly was careful to design BC-STV to avoid the fractionalization that he's concerned about - to get elected, a candidate needs the support of at least 12.5% of the population in a region, and closer to 20% on average province-wide - this largely prevents single issue parties or candidates from being elected. I think the CA chose a wise balance - strong proportionality, strong local representation, and improved accountability.

Re: Kamloops This Week - Poor representation means ‘no’ vote

ahodgson — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:35:46 -0000

With First Past the Post, you only need 36% of the vote on average to fully determine the outcome of the election. This means that candidates can focus their vote-hunting in the larger towns and centres and never venture out to the smaller places.

In contrast, with BC-STV, upwards of 80% of the votes are needed to be elected. If candidates don't go into the smaller towns, they'll lose. Local representation and accountability INCREASES with BC-STV, not the other way around. That's why virtually all the Citizens' Assembly members from the more rural parts of the province chose BC-STV over both Mixed Member Proportional (no direct local connection in exchange for proportionality) and our current First Post the Post system (representation of their choice denied to half the voters). These CA members felt that BC-STV would provide the best possible balance between strong representation of the voters' choice and strong local representation.

Note that even today, all three MLAs in the Prince George area live in the city. They can do this because they don't need the votes from Vanderhoof or Burns Lake or Valemount to win - they've got quite a comfortable margin to rest on (especially with Green supporters splitting their votes). With BC-STV, you'd see many of the candidates visiting all the towns along Highway 16 because some of them will be crucially dependent on these votes to win. Prince George actually represents only 70,000 of the total population of 130,000 in the North Central STV district. Since less than 40% of the population voted in 2005, Prince George only has about 25,000 voters and the smaller towns and unincorporated areas have about 21,000. To get elected under BC-STV, a candidate needs about 12,000 votes. Since about half of Prince George usually votes for the Liberals, at most one Liberal candidate could pick up the votes they need entirely in Prince George - if the other Liberal candidates wanted to be elected, they'd have to find their votes outside of the city. How they would succeed without making real connections there, I don't understand.

Similarly, an NDP candidate could likely only pick up about 6-8000 votes entirely in Prince George. This would be just a bit more than half of what they need to get elected. You can bet they'll be highly motivated to go out and look for more in the more rural towns and unincorporated districts.

Another point that's often overlooked is the implications for First Nations' representation. Aboriginals represent about 10% of the North Central district and 30-40% in the Northwest district, yet only two First Nations MLAs have ever been elected. Under First Past the Post, you have to win more votes than anyone else, so groups in the minority find it very difficult to ever win representation. With BC-STV, a 25% share of the vote in a 3 seat riding is enough to give a cohesive group of voters a representative of their own choosing, regardless of how anyone else votes. This means that it's quite likely that First Nations people in the Northwest would be able to consistently elect a First Nations MLA, and First Nations people in the North Central area will have about half the votes needed to elect one of the North Central MLAs. BC-STV will therefore allow First Nations to consolidate their voting strength across several existing ridings and have considerably more influence over the election of at least one MLA in each STV district.

Re: Vanderhoof Omineca Express - Candidates stake out ground on issues

ahodgson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:47:38 -0000

As much as I respect John Rustad, he's just plain wrong that BC-STV benefits large communities. With our current voting system, the winning candidate on average needs only 36% of the vote to beat their nearest competitor, and never needs more than half the vote. In many First Past the Post ridings, that much of the vote can be had in the biggest town, so there's no structural incentive for a candidate to get out and about in the riding.

In contrast, with BC-STV, over 80% of the voters are actively needed to determine the outcome of the election. Since there would be no STV riding in the province where 75% of the voters would come from the biggest town, candidates would have to seek votes from the smaller towns and communities - if they failed to do this, they wouldn't be elected.

By increasing the number of voters whose votes affect the outcome, by eliminating safe seats, and ensuring that over 90% of voters will have an MLA they support, BC-STV will make MLAs more accountable, not less. On May 12th, vote for BC-STV.

Re: Summerland Review - STV used in the past

ahodgson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:20:02 -0000

Technically, we had half of STV in 1952 and 1953 - we had what is known as a preferential ballot, but each ballot listed only one candidate from each party, not several, so voters had no choice between candidates, the way we will if voters support BC-STV. The preferential ballot (sometimes known as AV, or the Alternative Vote) therefore gave the Social Credit an opening into politics in BC (they would not have won nearly as many seats otherwise), but it did not produce a close correspondence between vote share and seats - the Socreds, for example, won 40% of the seats on 27% of the vote, while the Liberals won 12% of the seats on 23.5% of the vote. In 1953, the Socreds had gone to 60% of the seats on 38% of the vote, while the Liberals dropped to 8% on the same 23.5% of the vote.

BC-STV will produce legislatures which will be markedly more accurate in reflecting how we vote. If we could replay the 1952 election with BC-STV in place, we likely would have seen the Socreds and the CCF each win about 30% of the seats, with the Liberals and Conservatives winning the other 40% between them. In the 1953 election, the Socreds might have extended their lead to 40%, while the Liberals and Conservatives would have dropped back to 30%; the Socreds would still have formed government, but they almost certainly would not have been in a majority situation and would have had to have worked with the Liberals and/or the Conservatives to govern.

BC-STV would therefore have given us the renewal BC voters wanted at the time, but with some checks and balances to ensure that the interests of a broader range of British Columbians were taken into account.

Re: BCLocalNews.com - Caution with change

ahodgson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:22:29 -0000

Of course, if we'd been using our deeply flawed First Past the Post voting system, the so-called 'major party' Ebenstiner refers to (the National Party), which had won only 33.9% of the vote, would have been free to implement its policies despite any objections from the other two-thirds of the voters. In my books, one-third shouldn't trump two-thirds. Much better to have a system where a government has to work with other parties to build a consensus that represents a policy acceptable to a true majority of the population.

Incidentally, Ebenstiner is being totally misleading about the nature of the major party's coalition partner, New Zealand First. NZF is unrelated to the Maori party, and is in fact better described as a nationalist party which focuses on issues of concern to senior citizens; its leader had previously served as a cabinet minister with the National Party, so there were many ideological similarities between the parties.

I particularly don't understand why Ebenstiner is trying to insinuate that proportional representation systems give undue influence to ethnic minorities - this strikes me as a very racist argument and one that would not be acceptable in modern, pluralistic British Columbia, where many of us value and welcome diversity in all aspects of our lives, including our primary public institutions. The fact that our current voting system is highly exclusionary and impedes participation of minority perspectives is one of the main reasons I want to change to BC-STV.

Finally, political scientist Jonathan Boston evaluated the New Zealand experience and concluded that there had been no impairment in governing effectiveness, broader consultation on legislation, and an improved ability to control and avoid fiscal deficits. Ebenstiner provides no evidence of her claim that the 'tail is wagging the dog' - the noted political scientist Arend Lijphart has stated quite clearly that there is no evidence of any negative association between accurate representation and problems in governing. In fact, the evidence is the opposite - so-called 'consensus democracies' equal or exceed majoritarian systems on a broad array of fiscal and social indicators. British Columbians are sensible people - we should not be afraid to take this step towards improved representation.

Re: Kamloops This Week - STV will increase representation

ahodgson — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:06:26 -0000

Despite what pro-status-quo folks say, turnover under FPTP and STV is actually pretty similar - in both Canada and Ireland, 80% of incumbents who run for re-election win. The difference is that in Canada, voters have very little control over who gets kicked out when the tide starts running against a party. There's virtually no way that Ralph Sultan will lose in West Van (he won 68% of the vote vs 19% for the NDP) or that Jenny Kwan will lose in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant (she won 64% of the vote to the Liberal candidate's 21%). The only people who are likely to lose their seats are the MLAs in the 25% of ridings where the difference in the vote share was under 5%.

In contrast, with BC-STV, since voters can choose not only which party to support, but which candidate from their preferred party, every sitting MLA will be vulnerable to defeat if they're not responsive to their supporters. If Irish representatives survive from election to election, that simply means that they've connected with their supporters, who could easily and effectively choose someone else to represent them. That's real accountability.

Re: Comox Valley Record - The Other Ballot

ahodgson — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:11:08 -0000

If you want as many voters as possible to have an MLA of their own choosing, you have to have more than one MLA representing a given town or region. That's why STV uses multimember districts - there's simply no other way to increase the average number of voters who support their MLA beyond the dismal 50% provided by our current system.

What happens in the rural ridings in Ireland (see the map at http://tinyurl.com/d3dlmv) is that the different representatives tend to come from all across the riding - constituency offices are widely distributed and people get better constituency service because the representatives need more votes to be elected than under our current system - that keeps them responsive. On policy issues, voters tend to contact the representative whom they feel will be the most sympathetic to the voter's concerns. BC-STV therefore gives us the best of both worlds - responsive constituency representation and sympathetic policy representation.

Remember too that Sunshine Coast voters told the Electoral Boundaries Commission that they felt more affinity with the coastal communities of Vancouver Island than the closer, but markedly more urban, ridings of the North Shore. There will certainly still be one or more constituency offices on the Sunshine Coast, and almost all voters there will be able to approach both government and opposition MLAs for help with their concerns.

Re: Comox Valley Record - The Other Ballot

ahodgson — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:48:43 -0000

If we want most voters to have an MLA they support, we have to have multimember districts - there's simply no other way to ensure that, at a minimum, both NDP and Liberal supporters have an MLA of their own choosing.

What happens in practice in the rural districts in Ireland (see map at http://tinyurl.com/d3dlmv) is that the representatives tend to come from all over, so constituency offices get set up everywhere and voters go to the nearest one for non-partisan constituency concerns. Representatives are responsive to their constituents because each one depends on more votes under STV than First Past the Post to be elected and therefore can't afford to have a reputation of being aloof. However, voters are also free to approach the representative they feel will be most sympathetic or most expert when they have a policy concern. This gives us the best of both worlds - strong, responsive constituency representation and sympathetic policy representation.

Remember also that voters on the Sunshine Coast told the Electoral Boundaries Commission that they felt more affinity with the coastal communities of Vancouver Island than the closer but more urban ridings of the North Shore - that's why it's part of the North Island district. However, the Sunshine Coast will certainly continue to have one or more constituency offices located there and any MLAs who won a significant number of votes there (ie, likely a Liberal MLA and at least one of the two likely NDP MLAs, and possibly a Green MLA) would be spending time on the Sunshine Coast working on connecting with their supporters, so the Coast would be more visible to both government and opposition parties than it is now.

Re: Richmond Review - STV: Voting system put to a vote

ahodgson — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:05:38 -0000

I'm shocked that Nielson would call voters too stupid to understand STV - what arrogance! With such ridiculous misinformation coming from our MLAs, no wonder people are confused. Nielson knows (or should know) that STV is dead easy to use, and the counting process takes all of five minutes to understand - see any of the helpful videos at stv.ca or the Citizens' Assembly's website. He also completely misrepresents how STV works - to get elected, a candidate needs almost a full current riding's worth of votes - roughly twice what the average MLA needs now to get elected. If Nielson thinks this will make it easier to get elected, he doesn't understand the system - only candidates who are well respected and well supported in the population stand a chance.

It's also amusing to hear him talk about predictability and stability - BC is known for wildly unpredictable and changeable governments. A major purpose of STV is to bring predictability and stability to government. Ireland, which uses STV, has had fewer elections than Canada over the last 60 years and a much more stable policy climate marked by a strong and durable consensus between business and labour that has been forged through their political process. Ireland's government has alternated between centre-left and centre-right government for many years - much less polarized than our more widely separated two party system.

The reason STV has not been adopted in more places is that voters are rarely consulted - STV works in the interests of voters, not MLAs. I strongly recommend that readers spend a few minutes listening to former Liberal cabinet minister Christy Clark explain why STV will make governance in BC better: http://www.youtube.com/watc....

Re: BCLocalNews.com - STV wouldn’t deliver proportional rep

ahodgson — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:46:20 -0000

This letter is completely wrong. For the facts, check out http://stv.ca/proportionality. STV has only 1/6th the level of distortion (disproportionality) as our current voting system. On average, STV delivers results with about a 3% difference between vote share and seat share, while our current, deeply flawed first past the post system has delivered an average difference of 20%. STV's proportionality is fully comparable to that of Germany (3%) and New Zealand (2-4%).

In Ireland, Fianna Fail has not 'dominated' Irish politics in the sense of winning a distorted majority. Rather, Irish voters have typically supported them with 40-50% of the vote, so they have naturally normally formed government, often with a coalition partner to ensure that the government represents a true majority of the population. In BC, a centre-right party might well obtain between 40-50% of the vote and have similar opportunities, but there is also the possibility of a centre-left coalition emerging, which will make every election much more competitive. In any case, the winning party will have no more power than what the voters deliver to them, in stark contrast to our current system which alternately gives the two major parties far more power than their supporters should rightfully command.

Finally, BC did not use STV in 1952 and 1953 - we used the single member alternative vote (preferential ballot). As a single member system, it had no intrinsic proportionality, in contrast to STV, and this is what allowed the Socreds to come up the middle between the Liberals and Conservatives. Once they tasted power, they switched back to the system which would lock it in, reduce the Liberals and Tories to rump parties, and prevent alternative voices from emerging for the indefinite future. If you like stasis, vote for the status quo. If you prefer political evolution which is responsive to the voters, vote for BC-STV.