on May 17 vote yes

On May 17 those of us that care enough to shoulder the responsibility for the rest will mosey down to the polls to cast our vote for Provincial leadership. I’ve already pegged my vote and pehaps for the first time ever it’s a careful move taking into consideration the complete platform of each party, rather than reacting to the past failures of any of them. Don’t just patch the problem. Fix it for real and for good.

It’s a pretty simple concept for me- which party is acting in the best interest of my province, keeping in mind the absolutely essential focus on long-term benefit. Make the province a great place to live and the rest will follow. It’s that same philosophy which makes me shake my head everytime education and health care take a beating for the sake of more corporate tax cuts. Stupid. Short sighted. And stupid.

But that’s another post. On May 17 we will also be asked to vote on whether to implement electoral reform for the 2009 provincial election. The Citizens’ Assembly On Electoral Reform published a report in December 2004 recommending a change from Plurality Voting to a system they call the BC-STV, the BC Single Transferable Vote. What that boils down to in practice is a ranking system of preference on voting ballots, where you assign a number to each candidate in order of preference. 1 is your first choice, and so on. You can assign a number to as many candidates as you have an opinion on, so long as you indicate at least one.

How the votes are counted gets a little confusing and I think if I try to explain it here I’ll just make it worse. Very briefly- candidates are elected automatically when a given quota is reached, and then all the votes are recounted (at a deflated value) to calculate the next most popular candidate and so on until all seats are filled.

In November 2004 Wired published a short description of six election models which I’ll paraphrase here:

Plurality Voting
One person, one vote.
– perfect for a two party system but in most democracies you can have unexpected results where voters might sacrifice their real preference to boost whomever they think has the best chance of beating their least favourite candidate. Jesse Ventura beat the Replublicans and Democrats 37/35/28%.

Instant Runoff
Rank your candidates.
– this is the system most closely resembling the one designed and advocated by the Citizens’ Assembly. If a majority isn’t reached in the first count, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and his/her supporters’ ballots are recounted and allocated to their second choice. And so on until a majority winner is found. Mathematical models show that this model can still fail to accurately represent the will of the electorate. Ranking a candidate lower can still cause him/her to climb the overall rankings. That makes sense- if you rank a guy seventh he may still climb the ranks because votes above him are too evenly distributed.

Cumulative Voting
X Votes per Voter
– Distribute your votes however you like. If you get ten votes you can give them all to your first choice, or divvy them up amongst all your favourites. The obvious downside is this greatly empowers the guy with the most money to blow on his campaign. If you give all ten of your votes you weaken the position of your second favourite, who turns out overall to have the best chance to beat your least favourite choice. But if you give five votes to your first & second favourite you weaken your first choice. This system is used in jurisdictions in Texas and many corporate boards.

Approval Voting
One point to each candidate you find acceptable.
This is advocated by many professional groups like the American Statistical Association and the Mathematical Association of America. The downsides are that you can’t distinguish between a great choice and an adequate one, and most people just vote for one candidate while some pick several. The outcome can be wildly skewed.

Electoral College
Win the Battle, Win the War.
The majority winner of each state/zone/precinct is assigned the value in electoral points of that zone, and whoever has the most electoral points wins the election. The model is “an embarrassing relic,” according to Daniel Ullman, George Washington University math professor, and is used only in America. This is how a presidential candidate can get the majority of votes nation-wide but still lose the election. SMRT.

Borda Count
High score wins.
– designed by Jean-Charles de Borda, one of the original proponents of the metric system. If there are eight candidates voters assign their favourite choice eight points, their second seven points and so on. Mathemeticians claim this is the only model which accurately reflects voter intentions every time, but it requires a lot of awareness amongst the electorate to avoid arbitrary assignment. You have to know all of the candidates, not just who you like and who you hate. The BC-STV system borrows elements of this model as well.

I think of all the above models the BC-STV gives the most power to voters and very nicely dampens the power of major parties and big corporate (or private) money in elections. There should be less politics in government and more governing, and I believe that while this model makes minority and coalition goverments more likely it simultaneously greatly reduces the strength of the major political parties in opposition to block the effectiveness of that government. That’s been the bane of the current federal minority government. So much time is wasted combating the stupid political maneouvering of the Opposition (Harper!) that it’s no wonder some people are thinking the Conservatives wouldn’t be so bad. At least we’d have the strength of a majority government. (I didn’t say they were smart people.)

In a nutshell I’m voting in favour of the BC-STV because I think it will more accurately reflect the will of the electorate in government. Less party maneouvering. More governing.