smart(i)er way to vote
DESCRIPTION
Uses Smarties to explain the BC Citizens' Assembly's proposed Single Transferable Vote (STV) voting system.TRANSCRIPT
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STV: A Smart(i)er way To Vote
A tale about voting…
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Some voters like really like the Red Party …
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while others like the Yellow Party …
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and still others like the Green Party* …
*any resemblance to real parties is purely coincidental
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but most voters have a wide range of views that don’tnecessarily match up perfectly with any party.
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We don’t usually live next to people who think exactlythe way we do …
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so wherever we live, our neighbours will have a widerange of opinions.
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This makes our neighbourhoods diverse and interesting, but it’s a problem when it’s time to vote.
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What we do now is divide up our province into ridingsbased on where we live.
Riding A Riding B Riding C
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In an election, each of the parties usually puts up acandidate in each riding.
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We each cast our vote for the candidate in our ridingthat we support the most (or dislike the least).
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In each riding, the candidate with the most votes wins, even if they don’t have even 50% of the votes.
* * *42%
45% 42%
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The winning candidate is then supposed to ‘represent’ all the voters in that riding…
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but a lot of voters (typically half) voted for different can-didates and so don’t believe their MLA shares their views.
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Even some who did vote for their MLA aren’t all that happy with them & wish they could choose someone else.
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Provincewide, one party usually wins far more seats thanthey deserve based on their share of the vote, and …
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so wins power far out of proportion to their level of popularsupport, often winning a majority on well under 50%.
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So, how would the Single Transferable Vote (STV)fix these problems and satisfy more voters?
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First of all, STV recognizes that neighbours don’t alwaysshare the same political views, so it tries to make sure thatas many voters as possible can choose the specific MLAthey want.
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The first step is to merge adjacent ridings into largergroupings, usually called districts. Each district will electmore than one candidate (three in this example).
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Each party will typically run more than one candidate, andpossibly as many as there are seats in the district.
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Voters anywhere in the district consider all thecandidates, so they have much more choice with STV.
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Voters usually identify several candidates they are mostly supportive of & decide which candidate they most prefer.
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They list that candidate first on their ballot (by marking their ballot with a ‘1’) …
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and then rank any other candidates they support using a ‘2’,‘3’, and so on. They can rank across parties, if they wish.
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To get elected, a candidate needs their fair share of thevotes. In this example, there are 35 voters…
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so a candidate needs just over 1/4 of the votes (= 9) to be elected. No more than 3 candidates can win 9 votes.
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Unlike our current system, voting is done in rounds so thatno voter’s ballot is tossed aside if their 1st choice doesn’t win.
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Since no-one has received 9 votes on the first count, wehave to eliminate the candidate with the least votes.
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The voter who supported the eliminated candidate thengets to transfer their ballot to their second choice.
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Still no-one has 9 votes, so the process repeats.
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This time, the two voters have different secondpreferences, so the votes go to different candidates.
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Next, a Yellow Party candidate is eliminated…
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and their supporters go both to Yellow & Green candidates.
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Now a second Green candidate is eliminated...
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And the remaining Green candidate picks up enough votesto be elected.
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This candidate’s supporters gather round to celebrate!
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Now a second Yellow Party candidate is eliminated…
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and the remaining Yellow candidate picks up enough votesto be elected also.
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More celebrations!
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Finally, the Red candidate with the least support iseliminated…
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and the remaining Red candidate is elected.
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The remaining voters also support this candidate, so(almost) all the voters are happy.
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To recap:
Our current voting system leaves about halfthe voters unhappy with the outcome…
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and tends to give one party far more seats than theydeserve based on their level of popular support, …
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while STV lets voters choose the candidates they supportmost regardless of which party they belong to …
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and produces a province-wide outcome that’s much closerto each party’s level of popular support.
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STV: A Much Smart(i)er way To Vote
Please vote ‘Yes’ on May 12, 2009 & visit STV.ca for more info