Doug's Dynamic Drivel

Comment from Yule
Time: October 26, 2004, 10:02 pm

Thanks for pointing to the wikipedia article, Doug. I’m completely in favour of getting rid of our current “first past the post” system, but STV sounds damn complicated — are you really in favour? I understand that the Green Party is up in arms over this because they were hoping that the Citizens Assembly would recommend a Proportional Representation system as used by other democracies in Europe (eg. the current German system). At first blush, I have to say that I don’t like this business in STV of “allocating” votes to another candidate, based on quota outcomes; it sounds a bit Big Brotherish. It’s also weird that the Citizens Assembly would recommend a system that’s so complicated that the government is proposing to spend hundreds of thousands of $$ to “inform” voters about how STV is supposed to work. Also, the TO Star had an article about STV, and an interviewee stressed the “adversarial” nature of the STV and that it tended to work against women. Any insights on that? The newspaper article didn’t really explain anything.

Comment from Doug Alder
Time: October 26, 2004, 10:19 pm

It seems to be workingwell in Massachuesettes (can’t remember the city but there was an interesting interview on CBC today). I think people aremaking way to much over “difficulty” as they say on the site it is as easy as 1 2 3 – just list the candidates in your order of preference. The tabulation is not that difficult. Dave has a pretty good explanation today. I really don’t see how this hurts women – more people will be elected, more minority parties will get in – not as many as under a straight PR system but a hell of a lot more than under FPtP we have now so this should benefit women. Our present system that says only one person is goingto get elected in each riding and who runs is heavily controlled by essentially male dominated parties has got to be worse for women than this proposal. Big brotherish? No more so than what we have npw where a government can win 99% of all the seats with barely 50% of the actual popular vote, effectively disenfranchising near 50% of the population but forcing that50% to live with the dictates of the others. That seems a lot more big brotherish to me. So on the whole yes I do favour this. straight PR systems do not lead to good government, too hard to reach consensus. I expect there to be a lot of FUD going around as vested interests in FPtP systems do their best to keep us where we are. If we let this opportunity pass, even if it isn’t perfect, we’ll be stuck with a severely flawed system for another 100 years, a system that really favours entrenched political dichotomies and rewards the winner with the ability to set the ground rules for the future.

Comment from Yule
Time: October 27, 2004, 8:00 am

It’s Cambridge, Mass. that uses it. The People’s Republic of Cantabridgia (and various other monikers it has), home of Hahvahd. Things do work out a bit better there than in some of the other districts around Boston, so… I’ll vote for it come May because the FPtP system is completely unfair; and I’ll check out your link to the PDF file on it as well as Dave’s explanation. Re. the German system: it’s quite simple as well as effective: you get two votes, one for the candidate of your choice in your riding / district, the other for the party you prefer. The candidate with the most votes in that district/ riding wins the seat and gets sent to Parliament, while on a national level the votes for parties are counted, and parties send delegates to sit in Parliament (along with the directly elected members from the ridings) to represent party policies according to how many votes they got overall. And a party has to pass the 5% hurdle so that you don’t have a bunch of splinter groups (as in Weimar). That way you can vote for a candidate you like even if you don’t like her party as much, and cast another vote for a party you prefer.

Comment from Yule
Time: October 27, 2004, 9:16 am

PS: The TO Star article is from Oct.25, B.C. Voters to vote on how to vote by Steve Mertl. It notes: “…the proposal is already under fire from the B.C. Green party. The Greens were rocked Saturday when assembly delegates favoured the single transferable vote, which is used in only a handful of jurisdictions worldwide, over a more conventional form of proportional representation. (…) The Greens prefer a multiple-member proportional system that features two votes — one for a candidate and the second for a party. Sixty per cent of MLAs would be elected from constituencies and the rest at large, picked from party lists based on a percentage of the party vote. ‘The STV system is one that is more highly adversarial,’ Carr said. ‘It leaves women out of politics. Parties vote en bloc. I think we need to get away from that.’” The article does not explain who Carr is (Adriane Carr, leader of the Green Party in BC), nor why she thinks it will “leave women out of politics.” I did look up her website and there’s a press release here where she reiterates the point re. women: she says, “It’s not truly proportional. It entrenches big vested parties. It’s rock bottom in terms of getting women elected.” The Star article added that “Political scientist Campbell Sharman, the assembly’s associate researcher, said other societal factors may figure into the lack of women in some STV-based systems.” But otherwise not much by way of explanation.

Comment from Doug Alder
Time: October 27, 2004, 4:44 pm

You know Yule this just pisses me off with the Green Party. It really does. Frankly this makes Carr look like a petulant child who didn’t get its way. She doesn’t put forth any evidence to back her claims, not even a concrete example of how it might work against women. Nope, like a typical politician trying to sway the public she just makes a big bald-faced claim and leaves it at that. Just another typical politician – looks like at least the leadership of the Greens has been co-opted by the system after all.

Comment from Yule
Time: October 27, 2004, 5:43 pm

Yes, there’s no explanation. The only thing I could find online were references to Malta, which has the lowest number of women in any parliament. But we’re not Malta, are we? No Knights Templar here, or what? Why would Carr be trying to sway the public away from this, though? At least in Victoria, the Greens stand to win if we eliminate the FPtP system, and I bet they’ll gain in Vancouver, too. I don’t quite get it… If you continue to track this issue, I’d be interested in knowing how other Green Party higher-ups react to Carr’s take.

Comment from Bernard
Time: November 8, 2004, 2:30 pm

The representation of women in almost all democratic countries has been rising. No electoral system automatically makes it easier or harder for women.

Interestingly, it has been the nations like China and Cuba that have had more women in their legislatures than most democracies – though I doubt any sane person would want their political system.

STV has worked well for women in some areas and not in others. Yes, Malta does not have a lot of women, but Tasmania has elected them consistently. There is no shown causal link between STV and the number women elected.

Under an STV system in BC the probable result will be in the range of this: 35 seats centre right, 30 NDP, 4 Green, 4 Right-wing and 6 independents. BC will be looking at rare times in which one party has enough seats to govern on their own.

BC also has fixed election dates – this means the LG is empowered to ask other parties in the house to form government if a minority government falls. I would go further and say that the LG in BC is bound to ask another party of govern and only disolve the leg if there is majority of the MLAs that ask for it.

Comment from Doug Alder
Time: November 8, 2004, 4:16 pm

That’s interesting information Bernard – thanks. The number of women in the legislature has more to do with society’s views on women in power than it does with any particular electoral system. Given that STV allows for many more choices my suspicion would be that if anything it would lead to more opportunity for women to be elected because it makes voting for independents much easier and allows parties to nominate more than one person for a riding.