STV cure worsens disease

There is almost a cultlike passion among some advocates of the Single Transferable Vote. That's not to say they don't have a point when they claim that STV will offer greater fairness because the legislature will more closely reflect the popular vote. Then there are the other sales pitches. It will elect minority governments, reducing the dictatorial power of the premier's office. Independents will have a better chance of getting elected. Political parties will be weaker. Individual MLAs will have a stronger voice to represent constituents.

And then there is the argument that nothing could be worse than the present first-past-the-post system, in which a political party might form a majority government with less than 40 percent of the popular vote. The B.C. electorate has good reason to feel betrayed by the voting system. The NDP was victorious in 1996 without winning the popular vote; in 2001, more than 40 percent of the electorate did not vote for the Liberals, who still won 77 of 79 seats in the legislature.

Last October, the 160-member Citizens' Assembly (which included just two aboriginal people) recommended switching B.C.'s electoral system to STV, an obscure model used in two relatively small countries, Ireland and Malta. The issue goes to a provincewide referendum on election day next Tuesday, May 17.

Under STV, constituencies are combined into larger geographic areas, which elect between two and seven MLAs. Voters rank their favourite candidates in order of preference. The excess votes of the winner would be transferred to the other candidates. Voters could divide their votes between different parties. Every vote would count.

But sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. AZT killed people with AIDS. Vioxx caused heart attacks in people with arthritis. And STV has the potential to bring an endless procession of right-wing governments, which could undermine democracy.

Here is just one potentially negative outcome: the rise of religiously based parties in the Fraser Valley and perhaps in other areas of the province, which would hold the balance of power and demand cabinet positions in minority governments. Imagine Heather Stilwell, the hard-line Surrey school trustee, as the minister of health services. In Israel, religious parties have forced others to adopt a tougher line on settlements.

Under first-past-the-post, mainstream political parties must operate in a manner that's acceptable to a large number of voters. Under STV in a large multimember constituency, someone could get elected with less than 20 percent of the vote.

The biggest downside is disenfranchisement of poor people. SFU public-policy professor Kennedy Stewart has demonstrated that wealthier areas have a much higher voting turnout than poorer areas. In civic elections between 1958 and 1993, Kerrisdale had a 54-percent turnout, Dunbar-Southlands had a 53-percent turnout, and Shaughnessy had a 49-percent turnout. The much poorer neighbourhoods of Mt. Pleasant and Strathcona, on the other hand, had 29-percent turnouts over the same period.

In a system with geographically small constituencies, poor and rich areas are both represented in the legislature. Poverty-striken Surrey-Whalley and Surrey-Newton get their MLAs, and the same is true for wealthier ridings such as Surrey-White Rock and Surrey-Cloverdale. In Vancouver-Mt. Pleasant, the NDP's Jenny Kwan wins in a landslide, guaranteeing representation for poor residents of the area. And Liberal Colin Hansen wins easily in Vancouver-Quilchena, giving the rich in Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale a voice in the legislature.

But if those two ridings were combined in a large multimember district, the turnout in Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale would overwhelm the vote from Mount Pleasant and Strathcona. In fact, that is exactly what has happened in Vancouver civic elections over the past 70 years, giving the NPA a dominant voice for most city governments. Granted, an STV system ameliorates the worst effects of at-large voting. However, scrapping single-member constituencies will diminish the voice of poor people because they'll be overwhelmed by larger turnouts in wealthier areas. Candidates will increasingly tailor messages to those likely to vote, most often middle- and higher-income citizens.

In large multimember districts, there will likely be dozens more names on the ballot, disenfranchising voters with language difficulties.

Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees democratic rights and equality. But how equal are these democratic rights when one citizen gets seven MLAs, whereas another only has two? What would the courts say about people living in poor areas or ethnic enclaves having fewer voices in the legislature because their votes have been drowned out by those in wealthier areas? There's a reason why Surrey has elected South Asian MLAs but no Indo-Canadian city councillors.

The B.C. Liberal government should have referred STV to the courts for a ruling before putting it to the people in a referendum. If you care about the poor, vote no to STV.