An Excellent 'Sermon'

People who know me know I'm not much for religion but I was impressed by the this article on STV by Philip Symons which I came across on the website for the First Unitarian Church of Victoria.

Some of the best passages:

"Some people have criticized STV as being complex, and too difficult for voters to understand and use. This is an insult to Canadians! Citizens of other countries (Ireland, Scotland, Australia) use varieties of STV in at least some of their elections. Are Canadians stupid?

Users only have to prioritize some of the candidates and number their priorities on the ballot. The analysis of the votes is indeed more complex (for details see the accompanying sheet "STV-Single Transferable Vote-Primer"), but that needn't concern voters, unless they're political science students."

and further down:

"The Citizens' Assembly was selected randomly from voters' lists in every riding. ...
This random selection means that those on the Assembly are as representative a group of citizens in B.C. as it is possible to get. They are far more "representative" than our political "representatives"! And what this means is that if any one of us had been sitting in the Assembly, there's nearly a 93% chance-the proportion of Assembly members who voted for STV over our current "First Past the Post" system-that we too would have recommended BC STV!"

Well said. I think that's something people should consider is that any time someone actually takes the time to investigate electoral systems around the world, there is a good chance that they will end up recommending some form of Single Transferable Vote as the best system. There's a very small chance (<10% most likely) that they would think that our current First Past the Post system is the way to go. So people who prefer our old First Past the Post system should ask themselves what it is they know that the average B.C. citizens who spent a year looking at what would work best here don't.