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March 18, 2008
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PrintProportional representation would have resulted in greater turnout in Vancouver Quadra
By Nick Loenen
In the 2003 referendum, voters in Vancouver-Point Grey expressed strong support for a new voting system.
Sixty-four percent wanted the Citizens’ Assembly’s recommended single transferable vote (STV).
Provincewide, the referendum failed by a whisker. Next year, we get to do it again.
Let’s dream! How would yesterday’s by-election have been different under STV?
The results were: Joyce Murray (Lib) 36.1 percent; Deborah Meredith (Con) 35.5 percent; Rebecca Coad (NDP) 14.4 percent; Dan Grice (Green) 13.5 percent.
Firstly, voters behave differently. In this by-election, 66 percent of those who voted made no difference to the outcome. They could have stayed home.
With STV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. There is no risk of wasting one’s vote by backing a losing candidate.
There is no need to be strategic, no need for calculated gambles on how others might vote. Voting is authentic--you simply state your preferences.
We shall never know how many voted Liberal fearing that a vote for Green or NDP would inadvertently allow the Conservative candidate to win.
It is a classic case of voting for someone you don’t really want for fear of getting even worse.
While we don’t know how many, it is safe to say both the NDP and Green candidates would have received significantly more first-place rankings under STV than votes under the current system.
Quadra is a Liberal stronghold largely because of the current voting system.
Under those rules voting NDP or Green is almost an act of defiance. People know their vote is wasted. They only want to make a statement.
Imagine if ranking Green or NDP did not jeopardize one’s vote and had a real chance of shaping the outcome. The incentive to vote Green or NDP in Quadra would increase exponentially.
The first-past-the-post approach, in which voters mark one “X” on the ballot, is a winner-take-all system.
The one X indicates total support for a candidate and that candidate’s party, platform and leader, plus total rejection of all alternatives.
How unrealistic! Preference voting indicates degrees of support.
It makes voting an intelligent, thoughtful contribution to the public good, instead of a moronic, stab-in-the-dark, gamble with a two-to-one chance of missing out completely.
Secondly, candidates behave differently. With a preferential ballot, winning candidates need second-place support from voters whose first choice is with a competing candidate.
This is a powerful incentive for candidates not to engage in negative attacks. It rewards those who build bridges, who reach out, who bring factions and diverse interests together.
Our politics is too adversarial, too confrontational. We need more cooperation, more consensus.
Under STV, there are no safe ridings for a party, by itself. In the Quadra by-election both the Conservative and the Liberal candidate would have attempted to build support among the NDP and Green candidates.
The most successful “bridge-builder” would have won, and politics would be positive.
Thirdly, under STV the election outcome could have been different, very easily. Joyce Murray, the Liberal candidate, won for having the most votes even though well short of a simple majority.
As one would expect in a democracy, under STV, the winning candidate requires fifty percent plus one.
There is no way of knowing who that might have been.
It might have been Murray, but could just as easily have been the Conservative, Deborah Meredith, or even Rebecca Coad of the NDP, or Dan Grice of the Greens.
What we do know is no one would have assumed Quadra to be a Liberal cakewalk, and the majority of votes would not have been wasted. They would have mattered.
There would have been genuine incentive to go to the polls and participate. Voting would have meant something. Turnout would have been greater.
In a safe Liberal riding such as Quadra with eight successive wins for one party, what incentive is there for anyone to go and vote?
Conservative, NDP and Green supporters know beforehand their participation can only be symbolic. But even for Liberals, what incentive is there when the result is highly predictable?
On May 12, 2009, British Columbians have another chance to make voting meaningful for all. If you are among the two-thirds who wasted their vote in this by-election, next year’s referendum is for you.
You have a right to a vote that counts. Go and vote Yes!
Nick Loenen is a former MLA and city councillor for Richmond. He has written extensively on voting system reform. For more info, visit fairvotingbc.com.
In the 2003 referendum, voters in Vancouver-Point Grey expressed strong support for a new voting system.
Sixty-four percent wanted the Citizens’ Assembly’s recommended single transferable vote (STV).
Provincewide, the referendum failed by a whisker. Next year, we get to do it again.
Let’s dream! How would yesterday’s by-election have been different under STV?
The results were: Joyce Murray (Lib) 36.1 percent; Deborah Meredith (Con) 35.5 percent; Rebecca Coad (NDP) 14.4 percent; Dan Grice (Green) 13.5 percent.
Firstly, voters behave differently. In this by-election, 66 percent of those who voted made no difference to the outcome. They could have stayed home.
With STV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. There is no risk of wasting one’s vote by backing a losing candidate.
There is no need to be strategic, no need for calculated gambles on how others might vote. Voting is authentic--you simply state your preferences.
We shall never know how many voted Liberal fearing that a vote for Green or NDP would inadvertently allow the Conservative candidate to win.
It is a classic case of voting for someone you don’t really want for fear of getting even worse.
While we don’t know how many, it is safe to say both the NDP and Green candidates would have received significantly more first-place rankings under STV than votes under the current system.
Quadra is a Liberal stronghold largely because of the current voting system.
Under those rules voting NDP or Green is almost an act of defiance. People know their vote is wasted. They only want to make a statement.
Imagine if ranking Green or NDP did not jeopardize one’s vote and had a real chance of shaping the outcome. The incentive to vote Green or NDP in Quadra would increase exponentially.
The first-past-the-post approach, in which voters mark one “X” on the ballot, is a winner-take-all system.
The one X indicates total support for a candidate and that candidate’s party, platform and leader, plus total rejection of all alternatives.
How unrealistic! Preference voting indicates degrees of support.
It makes voting an intelligent, thoughtful contribution to the public good, instead of a moronic, stab-in-the-dark, gamble with a two-to-one chance of missing out completely.
Secondly, candidates behave differently. With a preferential ballot, winning candidates need second-place support from voters whose first choice is with a competing candidate.
This is a powerful incentive for candidates not to engage in negative attacks. It rewards those who build bridges, who reach out, who bring factions and diverse interests together.
Our politics is too adversarial, too confrontational. We need more cooperation, more consensus.
Under STV, there are no safe ridings for a party, by itself. In the Quadra by-election both the Conservative and the Liberal candidate would have attempted to build support among the NDP and Green candidates.
The most successful “bridge-builder” would have won, and politics would be positive.
Thirdly, under STV the election outcome could have been different, very easily. Joyce Murray, the Liberal candidate, won for having the most votes even though well short of a simple majority.
As one would expect in a democracy, under STV, the winning candidate requires fifty percent plus one.
There is no way of knowing who that might have been.
It might have been Murray, but could just as easily have been the Conservative, Deborah Meredith, or even Rebecca Coad of the NDP, or Dan Grice of the Greens.
What we do know is no one would have assumed Quadra to be a Liberal cakewalk, and the majority of votes would not have been wasted. They would have mattered.
There would have been genuine incentive to go to the polls and participate. Voting would have meant something. Turnout would have been greater.
In a safe Liberal riding such as Quadra with eight successive wins for one party, what incentive is there for anyone to go and vote?
Conservative, NDP and Green supporters know beforehand their participation can only be symbolic. But even for Liberals, what incentive is there when the result is highly predictable?
On May 12, 2009, British Columbians have another chance to make voting meaningful for all. If you are among the two-thirds who wasted their vote in this by-election, next year’s referendum is for you.
You have a right to a vote that counts. Go and vote Yes!
Nick Loenen is a former MLA and city councillor for Richmond. He has written extensively on voting system reform. For more info, visit fairvotingbc.com.
Comments
Here's the article:
http://www.straight.com/article/stv-cure-worsens-disease
There are better forms of proportional representation that can improve turnout without making things easier for the rich.
Dennis Pilon, Political Science, University of Victoria
And under the proposed BC-STV map Point Grey is in six-seater Vancouver West. But instead of having several upper-income safe seats where the minority might as well stay home, the 2005 votes would likely have elected 3 Liberals, 2 NDP, and 1 Green, instead of one lonely NDP MLA.
Other forms of PR? Indeed there are several other excellent forms. The choice next May 12, however, is between winner-take-all or BC-STV.
Wilf Day
At first glance, it seems perfectly reasonable – if turnout rates in one part of the city are twice that of another, surely the high-turnout area will dominate the election results. However, the Straight cites civic participation rates, which are very different from provincial rates – the lowest provincial participation rate in Vancouver in 2005 was actually in the west side riding of Vancouver-Burrard (48% - see http://elections.bc.ca), while the highest was 61% in Vancouver-Quilchena, a difference of only 13%. This small difference will have little impact. Indeed, the average participation rate on the east side (Fraserview, Kensington, Kingsway, Hastings and Mount Pleasant) was 54% while on the west side (Burrard, Fairview, Quilchena, Point Grey and Langara) it was 56%, so there is more myth than reality about east-west differences in provincial elections. There is certainly no two-fold difference here.
In fact, since the Electoral Boundaries Commission (http://bc-ebc.ca) has recommended two STV districts for Vancouver, the west side and the east side will be put into different districts in any case, so the only participation rate differences that matter are between ridings within a district. On the east side, the participation rates range from 49% in Mount Pleasant to 57.6% in Kensington. Again, these differences (plus or minus 4% from the average of 53%) are small and will likely have no impact on the outcome of the election and, since votes count equally anywhere in the district, candidates could only ignore Mount Pleasant at their peril.
What will likely happen under STV is that both the Liberal party and the NDP will win their fair share of seats on both the east side and west side of Vancouver. In 2005, the Liberals won 4 seats on the west side, but only 1 on the east side, while the NDP won the reverse – 4 on the east side and only 1 on the west side – but this distorts their actual levels of support and exacerbates ‘us vs them’ attitudes.
If STV had been used in the 2005 election, the NDP would likely have won 3 seats on the east side and 2 on the west side. The net change in seats would have been zero, but the 37% of Liberal voters on the east side and the 37% of NDP voters on the west side would each have two MLAs representing them. Surely it would be better for the east side of Vancouver to have two government MLAs representing the area’s interests rather than one. Right now, four fifths of Liberal voters on the east side and of NDP voters on the west side have no representatives because MLAs only represent their own constituents.
In addition, under the new STV boundaries proposed by the Electoral Boundaries Commission in the past few weeks, the Green Party would become far more competitive – they earned almost 80% of the votes necessary to win a seat on the west side. If voters believed that their votes would actually be respected, they might well win there, and potentially even on the east side of Vancouver. Given the Straight’s endorsement of Dan Grice in the recent federal by-election in the Quadra riding, they should surely welcome such a possibility.
Incidentally, Charlie Smith claims that ‘better forms of proportional representation [exist] that can improve turnout without making things easier for the rich.’ I have no idea what such forms of PR might be. The Mixed Member Proportional system explicitly gives more weight to regions with higher turnout and would therefore exacerbate the effect Smith describes rather than largely avoiding the problem as STV so nicely does.
In summary, I find no evidence that STV confers any partisan advantage to either the NDP or the Liberals. Indeed, its appeal to many electoral reformers is that it is scrupulously fair to the voters' declared intentions and, by extension, to candidates of all persuasions, whether independents or partisans.
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