Today's bLINKit: For my biweekly Courier column, I examine the single-transferable vote proposal for the May 17 referendum through the lens of dating. The metaphor is not entirely consistent throughout the piece, but what the heck. It means instead of dry prose about fractional voting formulas, I get to write:
Like a hot, young stud on a Saturday night, the STV proposal has much going for it. It was created by a dedicated, intelligent and thoughtful citizens assembly of British Columbians who spent hours choosing it from among other systems. They assure us it's got great hair and teeth and a good job. And while the assembly was put in motion by the reigning B.C. Liberals, both the government and the NDP are staying out of the debate, letting voters decide the most important policy referendum since the Charlottetown Accord of 1992. That's pretty refreshing. So why, on our first drive to the mall without our parents, did we get stuck with a referendum with so much math?
And the latest in the "we're going to die" category regarding of avian flu is here. Geoff Olson of the Courier refers to avain flu as the "vapourware epidemic." I hope maybe he's right.
Blogs more in the dark than my blog: Paul of Afghanistan is back writing his Kabul Diaries blog. His most recent entry concerns blackout procedures in the Canadian camp at night.
One of the things that has always made the Julien night sky interesting was the darkness of the camp. They practiced (somewhat shoddily, to be sure) "Light Discipline" so that the camp was blacked out after dark. Nothing like the blackouts you see in old WWII movies, with extra curtains to keep light from spilling out into the night, thus preventing the Vile Hun from bombing London. I guess the same sort of idea was at the root of this scheme. Black the place out so the nasty Taliban can't shoot rockets at the camp, which they have never really had any success with anyway. However, in a world where anyone can buy a GPS for less than $100, and the camp's position is well known in daylight, it seems a little silly. Not to mention that we are right next to an ANA camp which is brightly lit all night long. "Mustapha, aim for the dark area just beyond the ANA camp. It will be full of infidels."
OK Barry, you can accuse me of bias, but let's actually do the math. It won't take 20 minutes. I can tell you in 2.
Under STV, everybody elected within a riding has to pass a cut-off point. If it's a rural 2 member riding, you're going to need jst over 1/3 of the votes to get in. If it's in a very populous six member riding, you're going to need just over 1/7. In BC, it'll work out that every elected MLA will need somewhere from 15,000-25,000 votes to win a seat. Not too different from now, and in fact, the MLAs will all show up with a decent mandate. Not "in by the skin of their teeth", not landslide, but a decent showing.
Last one in's the rotten egg. If you come in last, you're out. There go the real losers, who only get voted for by their friends and family. And those people can breathe easy, saying they did right by Eddie the Marxist but now they can put their second choice toward the smart NDP guy, where their vote will likely stay.
But if you are Miss Congeniality, and you get, say, 60% when you only needed one vote over 33%, then people's second choices come into play. After all, she only needed just over half that to get in. Now, you could cut off the last votes and transfer them, but would that be fair? How come they don't get to vote for their first choice? By transferring the "leftover" of everybody's vote (imagine squeezing the top of the pile down to the cutoff point and letting the surplus stick out the side, then slicing it off top to bottom... I think I'll use a stack of plasticine to model it!) the transfer is more fair and the results are proportional.
Drop off the rotten eggs and transfer. Squeeze down the extra, slice, and transfer. In the end, you'll have the right number of MLAs, with a far more proportional representation than what we currently have.
Got a problem with proportional representation, Barry?
There are a ton of other reasons to support STV too, but I'll keep this focused and remind you Academy Award nominees are chosen this way. If it's easy enough for a pile of old actors to use, it's fine with me.
Check the Tyee for more erudite debate.
Cheekily yours,
Catherine
Posted by: Catherine | March 25, 2005 at 02:55 PM