Letter Writers for BC-STV – please respond to this article:
The editorial pasted below will appear in today’s Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090420.weSTV21/BNStory/specialComment/) . They must be immediately deluged with letters and online comments refuting the article. Please add online comments immediately and try to get letters in before noon.
Letters to the editor should be less than 200 words, and must include the name, mailing address and daytime phone number of the writer. Submit them to: letters@globeandmail.ca
Online comments here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090420.weSTV21/BNStory/specialComment/
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
April 21, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT
Rather than staging a rerun of the electoral-reform referendum of 2005, the government and legislature of British Columbia should have presented the voters in this year's election with a better plan for proportional representation, one that would balance proportionality with the need for effective and coherent government.
The intention of the rematch on the single-transferable-vote proposal, which in 2005 did not reach the required 60-per-cent approval, is that this time the people of B.C. are to be supplied with more information, partly because the two sides are being granted public money to get their messages across.
Though information may give the voters some help, STV is inherently bewildering. It is not only arithmetically complex, but it is also designed to weaken government through political fragmentation. The uncertainty and confusion felt by British Columbians in 2005 were symptoms of the scheme's own flaws, more than of referendum procedures.
Consequently, the politicians should have gone back to the drawing board; they should not have felt bound by the conclusion of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in 2004. Instead, they should have turned to the Citizens' Assembly's second choice, a mixed-member proportional system, which would provide for both strong riding representation and substantial reflection of the popular vote.
The extreme, lopsided results of the B.C. elections of 1996 and 2001 made a clear case against the current single-member plurality system, pejoratively known as “first-past-the-post.”
A purely proportional system would make majority government a rarity, yet there are times when the electorate itself wants a clear change of direction, which pure PR is highly unlikely to allow.
In 2007, Ontario voters were offered a mixed-member proportional option, which would have supplemented riding representatives with members from party lists, so that each party would end up with a shares of seats in the legislature equal to its share of the popular vote.
In contrast, a better, more balanced system would apportion the additional seats in proportion to the popular vote, but would only partly compensate parties for their riding-by-riding losses.
Both STV and purely proportional MMP are recipes for endless minority governments, and voters should reject them accordingly.
Eventually, a referendum ought to offer a system that allows for both fairness and effective government. It is worth taking the time to get electoral reform right.
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ReplyDeleteWe don't need four-year autocratic governments anymore! We don't need the antiquated First-Past-the-Post voting system.
We don't need the Globe and Mail to tell voters to reject BC-STV in the hope that the voters will get some kind of parallel voting system 100 years from now. If the voters want a parallel system in the future, vote for BC-STV now. Try it for a few elections. If voters do not like it, then the voters may advocate to change to the Parallel Vote system. Otherwise, by voting for First-Past-the-Post, you will be stuck with it in perpetuity.
Does anyone in BC have photos of BC-STV signs posted next to roads?
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