"No STV" campaign takes electoral reform fight to TV

When she spoke to the Straight on April 29, single-transferable-vote advocate Shoni Field was preoccupied with the CTV–Angus Reid Strategies poll released the day before.

"It's scary to see the Liberals at 42 percent and the NDP at 39 percent," Field, spokesperson for British Columbians for B.C.–STV, said via cellphone. "Guess what? That's 1996 losing numbers all over again."

In the 1996 provincial election, Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberals secured 42 percent of the popular vote, but, under the current first-past-the-post system, ended up forming the Opposition. Former premier Glen Clark and the NDP won based on how their 39 percent of the vote was distributed throughout the province.

On May 12, citizens will vote on whether to change the current electoral system to STV—a preferential voting system that would see larger ridings represented by multiple MLAs. Field said STV would produce election results that better reflect the will of the voters.

David Schreck, secretary-treasurer of the No B.C.–STV Campaign Society, disagrees. He told the Straight that STV is a "terrible" system.

"I bet she didn't tell you—in fact, I'm sure she didn't tell you—that with STV in Malta, four times the party with the smallest percentage of the popular vote got the largest number of seats," Schreck said by phone. "The example of the so-called ”˜wrong outcome' of 1996 happened once in 150 years in this province. In Malta, where they have STV, it happened four times since 1981."

Field said British Columbians for B.C.–STV has grassroots support, adding, "The other side, I'm sure, will outspend us on TV ads. They are putting almost all of their money on TV advertising because they don't have a grassroots campaign."

Schreck confirmed that No B.C.–STV is spending most of its funds on TV ads, but denied the society planned to go negative.

"If you look at our own Web site, www.nostv.org , the very top graphic is a link to the citizens' assembly's animated video on how STV works," he said.

Comments

13 Comments

KR

Apr 30, 2009 at 6:51am

Under STV it would no longer be possible for a party to form a Majority government with 39% of the vote.

The problem with the current system is you can win 100% of the power with 39% of the vote.

Or conversely, 42% of the people would no longer end up with 3% of the seats!

Shoni Field

Apr 30, 2009 at 7:47am

Just to add to my comments above - having a party form government when it has less votes is unfair and raises questions of the legitimacy of the whole process - it can also lead to inherent instability. Remember that in BC 1996 was followed by 2001 when although voters had intended to punish the NDP, 42% of voters still voted for an opposition but British Columbians got only 2 opposition MLAs. One excessive distortion in our system inevitably leads to another - I'm concerned that these poll results show we're heading for another 8 years of instability.

Antony Hodgson

Apr 30, 2009 at 8:30am

David Schreck needs to get his facts straight. We've actually had wrong winners in 1941 and 1952 as well as 1996 (in 1941, the Liberals won 21 seats on less than 33% of the vote, while the CCF won only 14 on more than 33%).

More to the point, the Maltese examples actually prove the point of BC-STV proponents - the Maltese results represent a 'disproportionality' of only a couple of percentage points - in 1981, one party won 52% of the seats on 49% of the vote - rather than the huge average discrepancy of 20% between vote and seat share here in BC.

The Maltese were upset enough about a 3% difference between vote and seat share - can you imagine them putting up with the huge differences we suffer through here? See http://stv.ca/maltese-would-riot for more details on why the Maltese would riot if they had to use our deeply flawed First Past The Post system.

If we had used BC-STV in 1996, neither the NDP nor the Liberals would have won a majority government on under 40% of the vote, which is as it should be.
Antony Hodgson
Director, Fair Voting BC
Supporting the recommendation of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform
Check stv.ca for information on the May 12th referendum

Chrystal Ocean

Apr 30, 2009 at 9:04am

With reference to past results, it's not an issue of unfairness of a wrong winner but the instability such situations can cause.

The 1996 election was followed by a gross imbalance in 2001. A repeat of the 1996 results, as looks possible for this election, could lead to years of instability.

Since STV encourages stable majority* governments, either led by a single party or in coalition, we'd be less likely to see something like this happening again. In fact, had we BC-STV in 1996 and 2001, it wouldn't have happened.

*Yes, I wrote stable <i>majority</i> governments; BC-STV would be less likely to produce minority governments than FPTP.

Nancy Pow

Apr 30, 2009 at 10:05am

STV is so much better than first-past-the-post. We never hear Mr. Schreck talk about why the Irish people voted in two referendums to keep STV. We never hear mention of other places that use STV, like Australia to elect the senate and the upper houses of all states plus the lower house in Tasmania; Scotland for district councils; New Zealand for district health boards and local councils; and Cambridge Massachusetts for council and school board elections. Mostly we never hear much defense of first-past-the-post, which time after time delivers exaggerated majorities that don't reflect the popular vote.

And as Shoni says, poll results for this election are looking a lot like the situation we had in 1996, where the party with the most votes lost the election. Are we headed for such a situation again?

STV will deliver proportional results and will improve representation at the local level because elected MLAs will be compared with each other during their term of office.

As a voter, I look forward to the day when I don't have to think about voting "strategically", where I can honestly mark my ballot by ranking the candidates I think will do the best job.

marvinmanley

Apr 30, 2009 at 12:55pm

No electoral system is perfectly proportional and so it is always possible to produce a "wrong winner" in a very tight election. The difference is that FPTP consistently produces results that are way more distorted that STV or any other PR system.

Schreck and company are disingenuous in this argument. It's a bit like saying that even a hybrid burns some gas and and produces some emissions so it's OK if I just keep on driving my hummer.

KR1

Apr 30, 2009 at 1:40pm

Yes, but the problem with STV is that we are opening up the door to have a whole bunch of little parties with unproductive policitical agendas. This creates a scenario of too many cooks in the kitchen, if you will, and then NOTHING will get done!

Reader via e-mail

Apr 30, 2009 at 1:55pm

Dear Editor

I'd like to put my quote about the CTV–Angus Reid Strategies poll showing BC potentially heading towards another wrong winner government that appeared in the April 29th Georgia Straight in context. Wrong winners are a problem, regardless of which party you support and which party wins. It goes against the very idea of democracy that we end up being governed by the second most popular party. Wrong winners send our whole system into a tailspin and precipitate extreme distortions like what we experienced in the 2001 election where we had an opposition of 2 MLAs even though 42% of voters had voted for one. In general, our cultures are so different that examples from Malta are not helpful. But in this case we can learn from Malta. When their unique voting patterns produced a wrong winner they recognized that it was offensive to the very idea of democracy and came up with a solution within STV. With our current system there is no way to fix the wrong winner problem. We are destined to keep repeating the wrong winner experience of 1996, followed by the polarized swing of 2001, until we change our electoral system. Voters will continue to suffer from instability and unaccountable governments. We have been waiting for political parties to fix the democratic deficit for years, its time for voters to take charge and choose BC-STV on May 12th.

Shoni Field / Vancouver

Peter Ross

Apr 30, 2009 at 9:45pm

I always find it interesting that those critics of FPTP in favour of some variation of PR equate popular vote with 'the will of the people', as if 'the people' were some sort of living organism - and therefore it must be the will of some 2 million individual voters to have a legislature made up of (say) 42% Liberals, 39% NDP, 19% others.

Yes, FPTP sometimes produces seemingly bizarre results when members are compared to popular vote, but those results are actually less bizarre than they might seem, because it means the party that won big had its support spread throughout most every riding. And if they do a lousy job, they are invariably punished in the next election - ie, that's how they are held accountable.

STV is a poor solution looking for a problem, and the issues with it have been well noted. It makes individual candidates almost irrelevant in favour of party politics. Independent candidates will become a thing of the past. Where these super-ridings absorb smaller ridings of varying social-economic concentrations, STV will actually over-represent the votes of the richer pockets (due to higher voting rates). Any of you STV supporters planning on attending 50 person all candidate meetings? Minority governments, even those in a coalition, are inherently less stable than a majority, which means that elections will be much more frequent - meaning that we taxpayers will have to pay for more elections, with no evidence that we will be better served for our increased cost.

I could go on, but my point is that while we may love to hate FPTP, there's a reason why it has stood the test of time. Its aberrations tend to be self-correcting over time, and (with apologies to Churchill) it may be the worst possible system, except for all others. Good government comes from the quality of the individuals elected, not the breakdown of the party lines. The more we subvert the thoughtful selection of quality individuals to the mindless voting along party lines, the poorer we will be served.

Brent Gibson

May 1, 2009 at 12:40am

I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Ross - there are problems with first past, to be sure, but I don't see the solution in ridings that are as large as many countries on the planet....
BG