What the heck is STV, anyway?
STV stands for Single Transferrable Vote and it is an electoral system which attempts to retain geographical representation (i.e. you vote for people from your area), while making the system more proportional (i.e. parties get a number of seats which corresponds to how many votes they got), eliminate the need for strategic voting (e.g. voting Green won't help a Liberal beat the NDP candidate) and give voters more choice among who they want to vote for (even among candidates from the same party).
As for how it works, maybe I'm lazy or maybe they just did a good job, but I can't really improve much on how the Assembly described it in their final report:
One thing I would add is that the expectation is that the most urban areas would have 7 MLA's and as areas became more rural the number of MLA's per riding would drop until reaching 2 in the most remote regions (this is to keep the physical size of the ridings from becoming too enormous).
For a graphic representation of how this works, I recommend viewing some of the flash animations at the Assembly site.
If you're more a theory kind of person, one way to think of STV is as a compromise between lots of ridings with 1 person elected per riding (the existing First-Past-the-Post system) and 1 riding with lots of people elected from it (pure Proportional Representation).
I explored this idea at greater length in the long version of my post on why to vote yes to STV:
"...Before explaining what STV is, it's worth considering what the opposite of First Past the Post would be. First Past the Post breaks the territory down into a number of regions (ridings) such that there are as many ridings as representatives and then chooses one representative from each riding. The opposite would be to only have one riding (equal in size to the whole territory) and then choose all your representatives from that one riding.
This opposite system is known as [Pure] Proportional Representation or Party List Proportional Representation (since it is normally implemented in such a way that who gets elected from each party is based on a list that each party puts together - although there's theoretically no necessity to implement it that way).
Pure Proportional Representation achieves (surprise, surprise) perfect proportionality, but does it by sacrificing geographic representation (and in the case of party lists, people are only really assured that they are represented by the party they voted for, not the individual). It is generally used in geographically compact places where geography isn't a big issue.
So, given that First Past the Post and Pure PR represent two extremes (One person elected per riding & perfect geographic representation vs. one riding from which everyone is elected & perfect proportionality) how do we compromise between them?
There are two ways. The first is to elect half (or some percentage) of the members from First Past the Post and half (or some percentage) from Pure PR. This approach leads to what is typically known as the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP), the system which was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada and the one which is going to referendum in P.E.I. in November. MMP is a pretty good system and, if you ask me, it's about equally as good as STV in general and probably better for large territories with many regional parties (like the federal government in Canada).
In B.C. however, the Citizen's Assembly rejected MMP and chose the second way to compromise: fewer ridings with more than one person elected from each one - STV.
Under STV you could have, for example, a riding from which 5 people would be elected (this riding would be 5 times the size of the old ridings if you wanted to keep the number of representatives the same). Voters would rank candidates starting with #1 and continuing up to #5. After that, anyone who gets enough first place votes (more than 1/6th of the total, since only 5 people can get more than 1/6 of the votes) is elected (if someone has more votes than they need, then their 'extra' votes are redistributed among the remaining candidates) and if nobody has enough votes to get elected than the person with the fewest first place votes is knocked out and the second place votes on their ballots are redistributed. This process repeats until 5 people are left standing."
So that's my take on explaining STV, feel free to contact me if you have questions and I'll do my best to answer keeping in mind that I'm no expert, just an interested citizen.
Want more info on STV?
A good place to start is 'Understanding STV'.
I also recommend reading in full the assembly's final report (it has more explanation than just the bullet points I posted), skimming the technical report(especially pages 9 - 20) or checking out the Wikipedia site on STV.
Next up, Why Vote Yes? (short version)
As for how it works, maybe I'm lazy or maybe they just did a good job, but I can't really improve much on how the Assembly described it in their final report:
- Electoral districts have more than just one MLA.
- Voters rank the candidates in the order of their preference: 1,2,3,4 etc.
- The number of votes needed for election (called the quota)is calculated.
- Everyone's first preference vote is counted.
- Any candidates that reach the quota are elected.
- If a candidate has more votes than necessary those votes are not wasted but transferred to the voter's second choice.
- If no one is elected the person with the fewest votes is dropped and their votes transferred to the voter's next preference.
- The process continues until a district has elected all its MLAs.
One thing I would add is that the expectation is that the most urban areas would have 7 MLA's and as areas became more rural the number of MLA's per riding would drop until reaching 2 in the most remote regions (this is to keep the physical size of the ridings from becoming too enormous).
For a graphic representation of how this works, I recommend viewing some of the flash animations at the Assembly site.
If you're more a theory kind of person, one way to think of STV is as a compromise between lots of ridings with 1 person elected per riding (the existing First-Past-the-Post system) and 1 riding with lots of people elected from it (pure Proportional Representation).
I explored this idea at greater length in the long version of my post on why to vote yes to STV:
"...Before explaining what STV is, it's worth considering what the opposite of First Past the Post would be. First Past the Post breaks the territory down into a number of regions (ridings) such that there are as many ridings as representatives and then chooses one representative from each riding. The opposite would be to only have one riding (equal in size to the whole territory) and then choose all your representatives from that one riding.
This opposite system is known as [Pure] Proportional Representation or Party List Proportional Representation (since it is normally implemented in such a way that who gets elected from each party is based on a list that each party puts together - although there's theoretically no necessity to implement it that way).
Pure Proportional Representation achieves (surprise, surprise) perfect proportionality, but does it by sacrificing geographic representation (and in the case of party lists, people are only really assured that they are represented by the party they voted for, not the individual). It is generally used in geographically compact places where geography isn't a big issue.
So, given that First Past the Post and Pure PR represent two extremes (One person elected per riding & perfect geographic representation vs. one riding from which everyone is elected & perfect proportionality) how do we compromise between them?
There are two ways. The first is to elect half (or some percentage) of the members from First Past the Post and half (or some percentage) from Pure PR. This approach leads to what is typically known as the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP), the system which was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada and the one which is going to referendum in P.E.I. in November. MMP is a pretty good system and, if you ask me, it's about equally as good as STV in general and probably better for large territories with many regional parties (like the federal government in Canada).
In B.C. however, the Citizen's Assembly rejected MMP and chose the second way to compromise: fewer ridings with more than one person elected from each one - STV.
Under STV you could have, for example, a riding from which 5 people would be elected (this riding would be 5 times the size of the old ridings if you wanted to keep the number of representatives the same). Voters would rank candidates starting with #1 and continuing up to #5. After that, anyone who gets enough first place votes (more than 1/6th of the total, since only 5 people can get more than 1/6 of the votes) is elected (if someone has more votes than they need, then their 'extra' votes are redistributed among the remaining candidates) and if nobody has enough votes to get elected than the person with the fewest first place votes is knocked out and the second place votes on their ballots are redistributed. This process repeats until 5 people are left standing."
So that's my take on explaining STV, feel free to contact me if you have questions and I'll do my best to answer keeping in mind that I'm no expert, just an interested citizen.
Want more info on STV?
A good place to start is 'Understanding STV'.
I also recommend reading in full the assembly's final report (it has more explanation than just the bullet points I posted), skimming the technical report(especially pages 9 - 20) or checking out the Wikipedia site on STV.
Next up, Why Vote Yes? (short version)
posted by Declan at
1:50 AM
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