[EM] British Colombia considering change to STV

[Raph Frank]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Yes. But not necessarily superior in
> all aspects.
>
> The first problem in my mind is that
> STV sets some practical limits to the
> number of candidates.

This is an issue for PR-STV.  In fact, it is (IMO) the only major issue.

In Ireland, the constitution requires at least 3 per constituency and
over time the average number of seats per constituency is being
reduced.  It is currently illegal (by statutory law) for
constituencies to have more than 5 seats.  For the upcoming EU
elections, Ireland's 12 seats are being returned from all 3 seat
constituencies.

> That may
> eliminate the smallest groupings/parties
> from those districts (= groups that may
> get representatives in the largest
> districts).

Right, small constituency size means that small parties would find it
harder to be elected.  The fewer seats, the more concentrated the
support that is required to be elected.

> One could also develop rules that would
> make the system more proportional at the
> country level

I think care needs to be taken here, as votes for a candidate are not
necessarily the same as votes for a party.
(The tree system can resolve this).

> There may be also different opinions on
> how person centric vs. how ideology centric
> the election in question should be. STV
> represents the person centric viewpoint but
> allows the voters to apply strict party
> preference order as well.

STV is actually neutral on this issue.  The voter can vote by party if
they wish, or can vote by personality if they wish.

Party list systems aren't neutral at all.

> Methods that force
> the candidates to clearly identify the
> ideological grouping and subgroup that they
> belong to may be more binding with respect
> to how the candidate will behave after being
> elected and during the campaign.

True, PR-STV doesn't require that candidates are specific about where
they lie on the issues.

> Yes. Or at least voters can choose which
> ones of those candidates that the party
> did nominate will win..

They can also vote for independents.  This is absolutely critical.  It
allows candidates to leave the party and still be reelected.

> It may be easy or difficult for the
> independents to become candidates. Since
> STV elections typically don't have very
> many candidates there may be a need to
> not allow independents on the lists very
> easily.

I assume you mean that it would be very easy for independents to
clutter up the ballot, since there are so many candidates?

i.e. you meant "... Since STV elections typically can have many
candidates ... "?

... or did you mean that party list systems don't have many choices?

> But once on the lists then independents
> are quite equal with the candidates of the
> well established parties.

Right, but there are surplus transfer issues.

I would probably allow ranking of parties, so that if a candidate gets
a quota (or fails to be elected), votes that he held  can be
reassigned.

> Assuming that they will be on the
> candidate list.

Well, yeah, they have to get on the ballot.  However, I can't imagine
a ballot access rule which blocks sitting legislators from being
placed on the ballot.

> (To me also open list (or tree) based
> methods seem to offer interesting paths
> forward. Here word "forward" should be read
> as "if the target is to move towards a
> proportional multi-party system".)

I think the tree method is superior to even open party lists systems.

However, PR-STV gives even more freedom to the voters, they aren't
locked into voting according to the tree inheritance system.

OTOH, it gives up national level proportionality.  A candidate based
list system (each candidate submits a ranking) also allows national
level proportionality.

I think a mix of 5+ seater PR-STV seats and a quality national level
system (say candidate list or tree list) might be a good compromise.

> (Maybe I should still note that also single-
> seat and few-seat districts can be forced to
> be fully proportional if one strongly wants
> to keep both features (and accept some other
> anomalies).)

Right, but they all fundamentally assume that a vote for a candidate
is also a vote for the party.