stv: a smarter way to vote

BC-STV: A Smarter way To Votei

Why your fellow voters in the Citizens’ Assembly chose STV...

Wherever we live in BC, some of our neighbours will share our political views, and others won’t. Normally, that makes life interesting, but …

when it’s time for an election, we get divided up fairly arbitrarily based on where we live (these groupings of voters are called ridings).

Each party puts up one candidate in each riding and only one candidate is elected per riding.

We choose the winner by seeing who has the most votes in each riding.

Here, Yellow Party candidates have won every single riding. Our current voting system tends to produce these sweeps.

The Yellow Party supporters are probably pretty happy (if they liked their candidate), but the Blue voters are left out.

BC-STV takes a more inclusive approach. The idea is to make sure that almost everyone gets an MLA they want.

First, voters in a given region aren’t divided up arbitrarily – any voter in the region can vote for any candidate the parties put forward. This gives the voters more choice.

Naturally, voters will support the candidates they like most – Yellow Party supporters will tend to vote for Yellow candidates & Blue Party supporters for Blue candidates.

MLAs are elected by roughly equal numbers of voters – here, there are enough Yellow Party supporters to elect 2 MLAs, but the Blue Party supporters can elect 1 Blue MLA.

With STV, virtually everyone gets an MLA they personally support, so your voice will be heard in the legislature.

Current FPTP system:

Proposed BC-STV system:

BC-STV: Not just a vote – A Voice!On May 12, 2009, vote for BC-STV. See STV.ca for more info.

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