STV in B.C.

Note: Originally posted to Crawl Across the Ocean on Dec 18, 2004

Daniel Girard has an informative, albeit oddly timed article on B.C.'s electoral reform situation. This is the kind of concise, informative, matter-of-fact information piece a long-winded, opinionated person like me could never pull off. The one thing he doesn't do (and realistically couldn't in the space of a column), is provide much information on how the electoral systems in question (the proposed [and far superior] Single Transferrrable Vote and the existing [outdated and undemocratic] First-Past-the-Post ) actually work.

For that, I recommend this , a flash animation put together by South Austalia's State Electoral Office, that explains it all and is entertaining enough in its own right to watch even if you're not trying to learn about electoral systems. Well, it's pretty cute at any rate.

One thing to note is that what the Aussie's refer to as Proportional Representation in the animation, we call Single Transferrable Vote, and what they call 'Exclusion (Bottom's Up)' is often referred to as Instant Runoff voting here.