By Orion Carrier
Questions? E-mail me at yes2stv@hotmail.com.
If you have Word, you can print a
leaflet to distribute here. Just print, photocopy double-sided, and
cut!
(Make sure the back side is facing right side up).
So few
people know anything about STV, and those who oppose it seem to spout nothing
but unfounded fears about it. Do you
know what STV is? Will you vote 'yes'
or 'no', and why? Did you even know
we're having a vote on it?
It's not in
the Liberal government's interest to get the word out about STV or they would
have funded the Yes and No sides of the referendum properly. They also would have made it a fair
referendum, rather than setting the bar so high—60% of the popular vote and 60%
of the ridings!
STV will
mean the difference between having the types of non-responsive governments we
have had for a long time, and governments being accountable to us, the
people. STV is vital to protect our
wilderness. It's vital to our health.
It's vital to protecting our ability to find quality work--or work at all. And it's vital to make our economy work for
British Columbians, not a few CEO's in
If we are
to win this referendum, it won't be enough for us to inform ourselves and vote,
we need to spread the word, correct the myths, and mitigate parties'
silence on this. For us to win, this
information needs to reach the far corners of our province where misinformation
and fear will likely be strongest.
So please forward the link you received to
this far and wide--even to people outside the province if they know someone in
BC that you don't know, and strongly encourage your contacts to do the same.
As I’m
trying to keep this relatively simple, please feel free to write me at yes2stv@hotmail.com if you have any
questions. I'll do my very best to
respond to everyone!
STV stands
for Single Transferable Vote. You can
forget that part (you don’t need to know our current system if FPP to use it)!
Actually,
STV is easy as 1,2,3! Instead of
marking an X by one candidate, you
can rank as many (or as few) candidates as you like by number. You put a 1 by your favourite candidate, a 2 by your next favourite, etc.
If you only want to mark one, just mark one. You can put a number by as many or as few candidates as you wish.
When the
votes get counted, if your 1st choice doesn't get elected, your 2nd choice
becomes your 1st choice. If then your
2nd choice doesn't get elected, your 3rd choice becomes your first choice. And so on until your vote elects someone.
This is
possible because multiple ridings are combined into a single riding. Voters in that "super-riding" will
elect as many seats as they did in all the separate ridings in our current
system. So if one party’s popularity is
spread thinly through the region, they have a much better chance of getting
candidate(s) elected than in our current system, ensuring representation in the
legislature for virtually all voters.
What we
have now is called "First Past the Post" (FPP). In FPP, the one candidate who gets more
votes than anyone else takes all the power for that riding. In a three-way race, that means up to 2/3 of
the voters voted against the
candidate that won!
Making
matters worse, we end up with situations like 2001, where the Liberal party had
57% of the vote, but took 97% of the seats and 100% of the power; or 1996,
where the Liberal party had more of the vote than the NDP, but the NDP took the
majority of seats and 100% of the power. Further, we have perfectly valid
parties such as the Green Party, and now perhaps DRBC, whose voters tend to be
completely shut out of the democratic process.
Under STV,
the share of votes a party gets is closely reflected by the share of seats won
by the party, so parties—and voters—get represented fairly in the legislature.
Our current
system encourages parties to strictly control how their MLA's will vote in the
legislature. Thus voters (in rural and
urban areas) are only represented in parliament when it is in the party's best
interests to do so.
Since
typically, more than one candidate from each party will run in a riding under
STV, voters will reward MLA's that represent them well, and punish those who
don't. So STV will weaken the party
whip's hold on MLA's, returning power back
to the people.
No more "holding your nose"
Under FPP,
voters are afraid to vote for who they really
want, lest their vote be unsuccessful in electing that candidate, and
contribute to an even worse
candidate's victory. So people hold
their nose, and vote for a lesser of two evils. The inevitable result of this system is evident in
Under STV,
you can safely vote for who you really
want, knowing that if that candidate does not win, you will still have your
vote count to that "lesser of evils" 2nd choice. The magic of this is, since others will
likely stop holding their nose too, it will be much more likely for the candidate of your true liking to win in an
election.
So, not
only will the party you like the best become stronger in the legislature, but other parties will begin to take the
aspirations of your party seriously to get a higher vote, ensuring the issues you care about get discussed in the legislature instead of on the
legislature lawn!
Under FPP,
since only one candidate takes all the power, it is in the candidates' best
interests to dig up dirt on the other candidates and parties. As a result, voters have little idea what
parties stand for, only that the
other party is "bad".
Under STV,
if I'm a candidate, and I don't get your first
vote, I'll want your 2nd or 3rd vote for sure, increasing my chances of getting
elected. What are the chances I'm going
to bad mouth other candidates whose supporters may make me their 2nd
choice? We'll not only see more civil
campaigns, but campaigns where we efficiently
learn what the parties stand for, instead of listening to politicians ramble a
bunch of fluffy nonsense.
As a very
pleasant and timely spin-off to this, more women and youth will be encouraged
to enter politics in this more constructive, less testosterone-power-driven
electoral system we have now, and will actually
have an impact!
MLA's are
the only professionals that do not require a qualifying education. Here's an example. You get an minister of
energy and mines who knows nothing about mining, who streamlines (read
"removes") mining regulations, leaving old, dated (150 year old) laws
in place. Then, he streamlines the
process even more by putting it online.
Within 48 hours, 500 new claims have been staked, including 1/2 of an
entire peninsula, for mining rights.
Property owners on that land have no rights. Among these property owners is... none other than Premier Gordon
Campbell himself. If you have time, you
have to check out this hilarious true
story!!
Company Grabs
Mining Rights to Premier's Land
Under STV,
governments will always have a strong
opposition. Oppositions naturally
scrutinize proposed legislation, and "dig up the dirt", making sure
it doesn't happen in the first place. I
don't personally believe, as many people do, that the Liberals are evil
people. But we've been missing this
sense of opposition in BC, and we will all pay the price.
Whatever
naysayers have said to me, their words have been unsubstantiated, uninformed
scare tactics. And they are quite
effective at frightening people who are unable to inform themselves or haven't
taken the time.
It's true
that under FPP, the rural areas of BC are effectively ignored--which is
precisely why I will vote for STV. Under
FPP, MLA's are strongly controlled by their parties. This means that a party's agenda comes before local issues. Under STV, there is far more opportunity to
reward MLA's who champion local interests and punish those who do not.
It's true
that ridings will be much larger, however, each region will be represented by
the same number of MLA's as under the current system. You can contact either (or any) MLA in your riding, who will all
be vying for your loyalty for the next election (see point 2. below).
Furthermore,
it is more likely one of your MLA's will belong to a party you strongly
support.
Well…,
that's like saying strong corporations always have people's best interests at
heart. This is government. It's run by parties. Parties are full of people seeking power
(and unfortunately money). Party whips
(people who punish MLA's who don't tow the party line) allow parties to shove
laws through the legislature that are unrepresentative of citizens' interests.
Raif Mair
says "...governments would have to sell their policies not only to Members
of the Legislative Assembly but to the public itself. Would this mean that government would be weak? It depends upon what you mean by weak. If
having to reach consensus before passing laws is weakness I suppose it is – in
which case, give me weakness." Read the whole article here.
Sting says
"To win a bloodless battle, the victory is long". Under the current system, after governments
shove through unwanted legislation, the next government destroys it all,
replacing it with something else. Every
time this happens, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are spent dismantling
old programs and putting up new ones, only to repeat the cycle the next
time. All money that could have gotten
you through school, or into that operation 2 years sooner!
More
consensus means parties will be reluctant to tamper with laws that have been
passed, since these laws will truly have been sold to the people, not just to
the governing party of the day.
This is not
true. A smaller party will run no more
candidates than it expects to be able to win, or it will split its support too
thinly among its candidates and elect no one.
So in a super-riding with 7 MLA's like
It is true
that it will be more difficult for independents to run campaigns without a lot
of prior popularity, but this is true of our current system as well. Most elected independents get known
originally through one of the parties, then branch off. Others tend not to get elected.
Also, if a
party or candidate knows that its support is more strongly concentrated in
certain areas, they can concentrate their campaign on that area, saving money.
Coalitions
form in
Over 70
countries world-wide are run by coalition governments. Of those, two--
Further,
such naysayers never tell you that coalition governments are the norm in
Finally,
coalition governments are unstable in
This
argument is called the "tail wags the dog" argument. One practical safeguard to this is that a
large party adopting policies out-of-step with most voters will be punished at
election time. So these parties will
choose coalition partners carefully to reflect voters' choice.
Typically, parties
and/or independents work together when there are some views and values they
share in common. Therefore, a closer
metaphor would be the "dog chooses which tail fits".
History has
shown that introducing fair voting only marginally introduces the number of
parties that can win seats and affect legislation.
Even if you
don't plan to vote for any party, get out
and vote YES to STV! And be sure to
drag every single person you know to the polls to do the same! And please,
forward this e-mail to everyone you know, and everyone who knows someone in
BC. Not only will this result affect
BC, but it will help all of
This is
truly an amazing historic opportunity to change the way we elect our
government, its composition, its effectiveness, and its accountability to
voters—and even to get this change occurring all across the country. In fact, it will affect the whole world,
because ultimately, a Canadian government more responsive to the electorate of
this country will have a profound impact on the international political
climate. And we all benefit from that!
ON MAY 17TH VOTE *YES* TO STV!!
By Orion Carrier
Questions? E-mail me at yes2stv@hotmail.com.
If you have Word, you can print a leaflet to distribute here. Just print, photocopy double-sided, and
cut!
(Make sure the back side is facing right side up).