[EM] British Colombia considering change to STV

[Anthony O'Neal]

It is a rather huge problem.  It effects the proportionately 
surprisingly little though - all the major parties still win a roughly 
fair number of seats.  Districting tends to produce much more 
proportional results than the seat size would suggest, as random 
political differences in geography give some smaller parties too much 
support in some areas to make up for their unfair lack of support in 
other other areas.  This is clear just looking at single-member 
districts.  Event though the threshold is technically 50%, it's rather 
obviously much fairer than a party list system with a 50% threshold.  As 
the number of seats gets larger, this effects seems to be exponential.

However, IMHO, the minimum seats per district should be around five, or 
at least the average amount of seats should be five or seven.  The fact 
that Irelands average number of seats has dwindled so dramatically over 
the years makes it clear that the big parties just can't be trusted when 
it comes to proportionality.

The minimum number of seats in BC-STV is two, the maximum seven.  
There's really nothing from keeping them from making nearly every 
district a two or three seater.  Clearly, as the situation in Ireland 
shows, this is much better than single-member districts, but the article 
should have been amended to state that the average number of seats per a 
district should be around five, which would leave room for two-seaters 
in rural districts but keep the big parties from colluding and 
implementing a seat number to their favor.

Juho Laatu wrote:
> --- On Thu, 30/4/09, Raph Frank <raphfrk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> It practice that seems to set the limits
> to max 4 and min 2 parties/groupings per
> constituency represented in the Dail.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_30th_D%C3%A1il>
>
>   
>>> 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).
>>     
>
> Yes, some tricks needed here.
>
>   
>>> 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.
>>     
>
> Yes, in the sense that the only problem is
> complexity in the case that there are many
> candidates.
>
>   
>> Party list systems aren't neutral at all.
>>     
>
> Yes. Or one could say that they may
> allow votes to individuals but they do
> not allow voters to define any arbitrary
> inheritance order of the vote (unlike in
> STV).
>
>   
>>> 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?
>>     
>
> Yes. One could try to limit the number of
> candidates to keep voting easy from the
> voter point of view and to keep the size
> of the ballots sheets manageable. And of
> course to keep the "irrelevant" candidates
> out (= individuals that want to be on the
> list but that don't have any realistic
> chances of being elected now or in the next
> elections) (this last reason applies to all
> methods, not only STV).
>
> The rules could include allowing current
> representatives to participate (as you
> mentioned), allowing parties to nominate
> candidates based on their earlier success
> in the elections and allowing any party or
> individual in if they collect some
> sufficient number of supporter names.
> Also money has been used somewhere.
>
> (One additional point is that in elections
> where the votes to an individual will be
> always (or by default) votes to the party
> the parties may benefit of naming numerous
> candidates while in STV nomination of
> numerous candidates might mean that the
> party will have weaker chances of getting
> maximum number of their candidates elected.)
>
>   
>> 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?
>>     
>
> I don't know what is a typical number of
> candidates in one constituency in the
> Irish Dail elections. In Finnish open
> list elections I'm used to have some 150
> candidates.
>
> (In the Finnish model one benefit is that
> voters have great freedom of picking any
> candidate that they like (not the one that
> the party recommends). One problem is that
> the system is not proportional within
> parties since within each party and
> district the system elects simply those
> candidates with most votes.)
>
>   
>>> 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.
>>     
>
> Are there some specific independent candidate
> related surplus transfer issues (more than that
> they don't have any fellow party members to
> transfer votes to)?
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Could you tell a bit more about the
> intended technique?
>
>   
>>> (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.
>>     
>
> Yes, I agree. In addition to providing
> more exact proportionality I find also
> the property that the voters can steer
> the internal evolution of the party
> interesting.
>
> (Ability to influence => more interest
> => more direct citizen driven democracy.
> This line of development may be beneficial
> in typical stable democracies that may
> already have some flavour of stagnation
> and excessive control of the party inner
> circles and external interest groups in
> them.)
>
>   
>> However, PR-STV gives even more freedom to the voters, they
>> aren't
>> locked into voting according to the tree inheritance
>> system.
>>     
>
> Yes.
>
> It is also possible to develop systems
> that mix both styles. That could mean
> e.g. default inheritance order (tree or
> even candidate specific) for short
> (exhausted) votes but allowing voters to
> define their own order / deviate from
> the default order if they so wish.
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> How exactly did you assume the STV and
> tree/list inheritance (and national level
> proportionality?) to be combined here?
>
> There are multiple options. There could be
> separate ballot entries for personal and
> party votes, or maybe parties/branches
> could be named as candidates in the ballot,
> or maybe each candidate would just have a
> link to some party/branch. The calculation
> process could also be implemented in many
> ways.
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
>       
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