[EM] British Columbia voting-method reform

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 01/17/2018 06:57 PM, VoteFair wrote:
> On 1/17/2018 5:45 AM, Greg Dennis wrote:
>  > It will be interesting to see which methods ultimately make it on the
>  > referendum ... and which method they use to choose the winner of the
>  > referendum :)
> 
> I was told that the choice would be done using IRV (instant-runoff 
> voting)!  Ironically that's not one of the options.  Of course that's 
> because it's not a proportional method, which is clearly their primary 
> goal.

That's unfortunate; I still think the New Zealand double question setup 
is the best one, where the referendum both has a yes/no question and a 
"which method if yes gets majority" one. (The question of what election 
method to use on the "which" section is another matter, of course.)

> For anyone not familiar with Canadian politics, they have more than two 
> main parties, which makes their election results unpredictable and 
> surprising, especially regarding party proportionality.  That's why 
> election-method reform is likely to occur in Canada before it occurs in 
> the U.S. (which is similar to what happened for women getting the right 
> to vote)

An interesting question would be why the US doesn't have multiple 
parties. As far as I understand, the different parties in Canada have 
strong local support (in different areas of the country), and that's 
what keeps Duverger's law from destroying them. But for some reason that 
hasn't saved US third parties. Could it be an effect of presidentialism? 
Or a corporate power thing? It is odd.