Just say no to STV

by David Russell

By all rights the Premier of British Columbia should be applauded for his willingness to keep his promise to visit the means by which we elect our provincial representatives to the legislature.

Let's face it: the current party, like nearly all governing parties in the confederation, benefits from the first-past-the-post system - or Single Member Plurality, SMP - in which the government is formed by the party receiving the greatest number of riding victories, regardless of the overall vote the party managed to capture from the electorate: in BC's 2001 election the provincial Liberals under Gordon Campbell garnered fifty-eight percent of the total vote and won seventy-seven of seventy-nine ridings, over ninety-seven percent of the seats [http://www.elections.bc.ca/elections/sov01/results.htm].

Who'd want to give that up?

To be sure the Liberals might be heading towards the end of the second rather than first term were it not for the flaws in our current system: in 1996 the BC Liberals won a larger percentage of the overall popular vote but were defeated by the incumbent New Democrats[http://www.elections.bc.ca/elections/sov96/results.htm]. But there is no doubt the system provided a tremendous victory for the current government in the most recent election. Given that, the Premier's commitment to pushing forward with his investigation of electoral reform is laudable.

In that same vein, the work of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform is also worthy of applause [http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public]. One hundred sixty-eight citizens, two from each riding, spent over a year delving into political science, electoral theory and governmental histories to determine first, do we need to replace our current electoral machinations and if so, with what?

Many a weekend, evening and personal leisure opportunity was sacrificed to the very important task of evaluating the very means by which we are governed. Heady stuff.

Regrettably, the outcome just doesn't work.

The Single Transferable Vote, or STV[http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/resources/deliberation/BCSTV-FactSheet.pdf] option will be put to the people alongside the potentially last BC SMP ballot on 17 May. In the remaining two weeks until the election, proponents and opponents will square off and argue the merits or pitfalls of the new system proposed.

I'll pitch my tent reluctantly in the camp of the latter.

I say reluctantly because it's clear our SMP system is flawed as evidenced by reviewing any number of BC elections. But there's plenty of reason to let the proverbial baby continue to languish in the tub if we're just willing to replenish the water and maybe add some electoral Epsom salts.

The STV, by the Assembly's own admission, will be much more likely to produce minority or coalition governments. On the surface, that doesn't sound so bad: governments working with a coalition are more apt to negotiation and reasonable legislation in order to stay in office. In short, politicians in a minority government will be forced to work together with less partisan bickering for the good of the province.

Had a look at the federal government lately? If ever an argument existed for discouraging minority parliaments, Paul Martin's current regime is it.

If how we elect our governments is the biggest problem we need to address - a questionable assertion at best - the worst downside of STV is the confusion factor. No, the confusion doesn't stem from how the electorate chooses candidates: if a voter can't figure out how to rank candidates from first to last choice, they probably ought not to be participating in democracy anyway.

The problem is transparency. If candidates for a riding are all elected on a first count, a statistical improbability in the proposed STV system, we have no problem. But the mechanism becomes seriously complex when it comes time to distribute the second, third or more choices in order to select members in a riding[http://www.citizenassembly.bc.ca/resources/deliberation/BC-STV-counting.pdf].

To be fair, the Citizens' Assembly has gone to great efforts to explain the proposed system, including animated instructions on its website [http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/extra/animations.xml]. With some careful study, many reasonably intelligent people could likely figure out the machinations (my own limitations with mathematics not withstanding).

But most people won't take the time for careful study of the system and there is little doubt that while the voting itself may be simple calculating what, if anything, happened to your second, third and fourth choices will be as easy as determining as Cadbury really did get the Caramilk in the chocolate bar: with a lot of experimenting with the ingredients you could probably figure it out eventually but by then you'll want something different anyway.

And the very last thing our system needs is any complication that is anything less than completely transparent. Ever decreasing turnout at the polls demonstrates the electorate is already deeply cynical about politics. If Joe Public can't immediately determine exactly what happened to his vote, or just what combination of first, second, third or twelfth choice got their MLA's elected STV will only breed more electoral cynicism and even shorter lineups at the polls.

Of course, the danger to saying no is also very real: if electoral reform is killed on this referendum will the political will exist within any party to resurrect it again? But no to STV need not mean the end of re-thinking our system.

As a start, a simple improvement would be requiring a majority rather than simple a plurality in each riding, even if it required run-offs or transferable ballots in each constituency. At least each MLA could honestly make the claim he or she represented the majority of his or her constituents.

STV simply won't fix the bigger area of needed reform: the operation of government once elected, from free votes in the legislature to easing of party discipline.

Until we find meaningful ways to change the functioning of our parliamentary government, throwing out our flawed SMP for an even more flawed STV will only make matters worse, and people even less trustful of our provincial politicians.