Issues in Depth

We've pulled together some additional information for those visitors who want to explore some issues related to BC-STV in more depth. Please check out the articles below.

Women's representation will improve under BC-STV.

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WHEN IT comes to electing women, Canada ranks 52nd in the world. Of the 51 countries ahead of us, 46 use proportional voting systems. British Columbia currently uses a voting system that consistently produces the worst results for women across the democratic world. Our flawed system marginalizes new voices, re-enforces the status quo and generates male-dominated parliaments.

Proportional systems key

Proportional voting systems, used around the world, produce much better results, giving women their deserved place in government. BC-STV is a modern, well-tested proportional model designed specifically to increase diverse representation in government. Members of the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, half of whom are women, overwhelmingly chose STV for its accountability and stabilizing effect on BC politics.

Multi-member ridings an advantage

The math is simple. BC-STV uses multi-member districts in which parties can run more than one candidate. That offers parties a greater opportunity to present both women and men to the electorate.

Other facts

The Australian Capital Territories has one of the highest rates of women being elected in the world, using STV.

Ireland, using STV, elected 38 percent women to the European Parliament while the UK, using a regional party list system, elected only 23 percent women.

The negative nature of political campaigning can discourage women from participating in elections. BC-STV encourages more constructive debate, as candidates try to secure the “second choice” support of their opponents’ supporters.

In Australia, suffragette Catherine Helen Spence and women’s organizations such as the Federation of Women Voters campaigned for many decades for the adoption of STV.

We deserve better. It’s time to end politics-as-usual in BC. We are a growing grassroots movement of people from across the province uniting to define a new vision for BC.

Women who support BC-STV

Scholars argue that women are likely to be elected in greater numbers under STV because it will encourage parties to change their nomination practices to put forward gender-balanced slates. That, along with more readily available childcare and other supports, would make it easier for women to serve as MLAs. – Donna Stewart, former southern BC representative on the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (1984-6), former federal NDP candidate for North Vancouver-Lonsdale.

Briefing Paper by Shoni Field, Citizens' Assembly Alumnae

The following is a briefing paper written by Citizens' Assembly member Shoni Field for the assembly's internal discussions. Shoni notes the following two points:

1. Every electoral system has large ranges in results around the world:

- FPTP: 8% (India) to low 20's (Canada) to 32% (South Australia)
- STV: 9% (Malta) to 41% (Australia)
- MMP: 6% (Albania) to 32% (Germany) to 50% (Wales)
- Party List PR: 6% (Algeria) to high 40's (Sweden, Rwanda)

Something else is clearly a factor besides the system. Research suggests that cultural will and political party will are key factors.

2. While electoral systems are not the sole factor, there is a big difference between the Canadian experience of FPTP and the experience with proportional systems such as MMP and STV in countries Canada considers our cultural and economic peers (40-50%); such countries generally have about 50% more women than Canadian legislatures do. So, when cultural will and political party will exists, more women will likely be elected under STV than under FPTP.

Preamble to Briefing

As a member of the BC Citizens’ Assembly for Electoral Reform improved women’s representation was one of my top priorities in desired outcomes from an electoral system. Early in our work I realized that the question of women’s representation was far more complicated than most discussions of electoral reform acknowledged.

Throughout the Assembly process members displayed an unwillingness to accept statements unquestioningly, seeking supporting documentation and data to support or refute those statements. This spirit of investigation was applied variously to “standard” definitions of local representation, stability, how proportional various systems were and much more. After conversations with many of the women and men on the Assembly during the Learning Phase about our shared conviction that any system we chose should deliver improvements in women’s representation, I focused my investigative efforts on women’s representation. Over the coming months, I spoke with a number of political scientists around the world who had expertise in the area of gender representation and electoral systems to find out what the research showed.

We had heard repeatedly that “STV was bad for women”, but further investigation failed to support that statement. Nor did my findings show that any one system could guarantee improved women’s representation. Higher women’s representation seemed to occur when a number of different factors were simultaneously present: a proportional system, political will that translated into pro-active measures and a culture supportive of women in leadership roles.

Knowing the widespread interest our members had in the issue I shared my findings with others in discussions during our weekend sessions and online through our discussion forum. Following our decision I summarized some of my findings in the following briefing to assist members in responding to inaccurate statements that were being made regarding women’s representation.

Women’s representation under STV

Shoni Field, Citizens' Assembly member for Vancouver

Critics of STV claim that it is bad for women’s representation and cite Ireland (13%) and Malta (9.2%) as examples – but they consistently fail to reference the five Australian states (3 upper houses and two lower) and the Australian Senate where, using STV, women achieve from 24 up to 41%.

Too often the discussion around gender and STV comes in a simplistic “Germany good, Ireland bad” format. It is necessary to look far deeper to understand the relationship between electoral systems and women’s representation.

Clearly as the Australian example shows, STV in itself does not create a barrier to women. The Australian Capital Territories (41%) has one of the higher rates of women being elected in the world. We can see that under STV, women can get elected in relatively high numbers.

Critics will say that STV is dependent on pro-active measures ie/ party quotas to deliver these high rates – but in fact when you look to other systems that can deliver high returns you will also see pro-active measures being used.

The critics also fail to note that other systems also experience both the highs and lows of women’s representation. Our current first past the post system ranges from India (8%) to Canada (21%) and BC (24%) and up to 32% in South Australia. PR List Systems range from Algeria at 6.2% to Sweden at 45% and Rwanda at 48.8%. MMP ranges from Albania at 6% to Germany at 32% (Wales 50%).

Clearly, something besides the electoral system is responsible for determining the rate of women’s representation. A survey of the research will show that the two factors that are incredibly important in determining the rate of women’s representation are culture and political party commitment.

Critics will focus on the “culture” factor and not acknowledge the “political party commitment”. They will state that it can’t be cultural in Ireland because women have achieved levels equal or higher to Canada in leadership positions in industry, professions, university degrees etc.

However this conclusion overlooks the fact that women’s rise in Ireland has occurred within this generation and that politics for the most part tends to be a “second career”. Therefore it would be reasonable to expect that once these women have succeeded in their first professions: doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. we might start to see more women in Ireland entering politics as their second career. The fact that Irish women are doing well in the European Parliament (see below), which being a newer institution has attracted a different group of candidates than the traditional power structures, shows that women from Ireland can do well under STV.

Critics will say that in South Australia women actually score better under FPTP in the Lower House 32% than under STV in the Upper House – 27%. Therefore, they conclude that STV is worse than FPTP.

However the fact that both systems score at higher levels than ever achieved in Canada merely supports the argument that the political system is not the deciding factor. In both of these cases, parties have institutionalized a commitment to getting women to run in greater numbers. A possible explanation for the difference is that some studies have shown that women are more likely to run for lower houses than for upper houses– this difference seems to be linked to women’s motivation for running and that lower houses offer more opportunities to effect health care, education etc.

It should be noted that under MMP there are also examples where more women have been elected on the constituency side than on the list side (ie/ under the non proportional part of the system). It is worth noting that once parties have made an institutionalized commitment to nominating more women in a proportional system it can spill over into the non proportional part of the system (or in the case of Australia, to another level of government). In countries where use of MMP is fairly established (past the first couple of elections), whether more women are elected from the list or from the constituency side often now simply reflects which party got the biggest percentage of votes. For example, if a party which has institutionalized equal nomination of women does well then they will be electing more constituency members, while list seats might be filled by parties who have not made the commitment to nominate women.

Considering that many of the critics of STV have some background in our traditional FPTP party structures one has to wonder whether focusing on the question of culture or the electoral system is just a smoke screen to avoid addressing the issue of political party commitment.

In all instances where you see relatively high levels of women’s representation you will see that parties have made an internal commitment to nominate more women – often it starts with one party making a commitment to nominate 50% women, which creates pressure on other parties. Of course, under our current first past the post system it doesn’t matter much how many women the Greens and smaller parties nominate because they are unlikely to get anybody elected.

You will notice that the upper end of women’s representation is higher in proportional systems. This is because proportional systems like STV offer parties a greater opportunity to follow a formal gender nomination policy. In our current first past the post system, when only one candidate is nominated by a party for each riding – the logic is to nominate the “safest” candidate – this generally means the one that most fits the stereotype of a politician – middle aged white male. Exceptions to this rule are what get noticed. But, in proportional systems where parties are putting forward multiple candidates, it becomes more obvious which parties DO NOT have a diverse slate. Also, it is easier for the party to say that they will nominate equal numbers of men and women in multimember ridings rather than dictate to one riding that they must nominate a female while another riding must nominate a male.

Critics will say that unless you have ridings of five to seven members you will not see good returns for women under STV – but if you compare the European Parliament elections for Ireland and the UK you will see that not only does STV compare extremely favourably but also it does so in a system based on four member ridings. Ireland, using STV elects 38% women to the European Parliament while the UK, using a regional party list system elects 23% women.

Clearly, under BC-STV, the Electoral Boundaries Commission has defined boundaries with an average district magnitude of 4.15 and only two 2 member ridings there is an opportunity to see similarly positive returns.

Critics might also reference: bigger ridings in STV mean more expensive campaigns – claiming that more money = more barriers to women. In response, from the Irish figures it actually looks like campaign spending is pretty equivalent to here.

Critics might also say that the negative nature of campaigning (where you are pitted against your own party) will dissuade women. But actually because a candidate needs to gain second preferences from the other candidates from the same party, STV can inhibit negative campaigning (if you bash them indiscriminately, their loyal voters won’t put you second) – you differentiate yourself from your other party members based on the positives that you have to offer. This is a much more constructive campaign model than our current first past the post system.

Also, given that you are likely to have situations where one party may have two or more candidates elected in a riding you have a situation where it is in the party old guard’s best interests to mentor junior politicians who will bring them second preferences. Having mentorship roles will help bring new people into politics regardless of gender.

STV, as a proportional system offers parties a greater opportunity to put into effect their commitment to increase women’s representation. It can not guarantee high results because no electoral system on its own can do that – an electoral system is a tool to reflect the voter’s intentions. Some, like our current first past the post system, distort voter’s intentions and have institutionalized barriers, but proportional systems like STV reflect them fairly accurately. If the voters and the parties wish it to happen, then women will achieve higher rates of representation under STV.

Providing a voice for communities outside of the lower mainland.

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TIRED OF being ignored if you’re outside the Lower Mainland? Vote yes for BC-STV. Yes, the ridings will be larger. But each region will still have the same number of MLAs and representation will improve. British Columbians are frustrated with MLAs who just report back on what has been decided in Victoria. We want champions for our communities. Our current system doesn’t allow that. BC-STV does.

First Past the Post problems

Single Transferable Vote solutions

BC-STV: Re-balancing power

BC-STV will make Interior, Northern BC and rural communities more valuable to political parties than they are now. Here’s why: regardless of the district size, virtually every STV district has one swing seat.

Just compare the Lower Mainland to an area with smaller centres: In Vancouver-West Side, the Liberals will likely win three or four seats, the NDP two or three seats and the Greens zero or one seat. The same swing situation will occur in Kootenay-Columbia where the Liberals will likely win one or two seats, the NDP two or three seats, and the Greens zero or one seat.

Northern, Interior and rural districts will be of equal political value to parties as those in the Lower Mainland.In each case, for each party, one seat is effectively up for grabs. When a seat hangs in the balance, that area increases in “value” to political parties. With BC-STV, virtually every district will contain one swing seat. What is at stake for a party in a district outside the Lower Mainland is equivalent to an urban district. Therefore, under BC-STV, smaller communities will become more “valuable” to political parties than they are under First Past the Post.

Local representation a top priority for the Citizens’ Assembly

The Citizens’ Assembly knew that local representation is extremely important for all of BC and critical in the North and Interior. Members were surprised to hear voters from across the province tell them that our current first past the post system fails to deliver effective local representation.

British Columbians told the Citizens’ Assembly that they wanted a fair and proportional system with more responsive local representation and greater voter choice. There are many proportional systems and some have local representation based on our current failed model. Only STV provides voters with greater choice at the local level. Only STV makes local contests more competitive and MLAs more accountable to their constituents. Only STV gives MLAs some leverage to champion important local issues with government.

The Citizens’ Assembly chose BC-STV in large part because it puts the voters in charge at the local level.

Frequently asked questions:


Will the Interior, North and smaller centres lose MLAs?

Each region of BC will have the same number of MLAs as they do with FPTP. BC-STV simply groups the same number of seats into multi-member districts.

Will MLAs all come from the largest town?

MLAs will come from across the district rather than clustering in the largest centre. How come? Since 80-90 percent of all voters elect MLAs, votes from the smaller communities make a difference.

Will the districts be too large?

Regardless of the electoral system, there will always be large spread-out regions in the north and other parts of BC. In the north, these new districts are significantly smaller than the federal ridings, but they have two or three MLAs and the quality of representation improves.

Campaign Costs Under STV in Ireland are Much Lower than in BC

BC-STV opponents claim that campaign costs would increase under BC-STV, but data that they themselves have gathered and posted shows the exact opposite.

In 2005, according to submissions made to Elections BC and posted by opponent group secretary David Schreck, the Liberals spent $7,758,375, the NDP spent $5,884,001 and the Greens spent $281,448.

In contrast, as reported by the Irish Standards in Public Office Commission, the amount spent by the Irish parties was considerably lower than this. The largest party, Fianna Fáil, spent €3,650,241 (at the exchange rate of the day, €1 = C$1.4612, this amounted to $5,333,472, or only 69% of what the Liberals spent). The second place party, Fine Gael, spent €2,809,474 (C$4,105,203), or only 70% of what the NDP spent. The Irish Greens outspent their Canadian counterparts at €553,859 (C$809,299), but of course they won 6 seats on 4.7% of the vote, so their ability to win seats under STV probably made it easier to raise money.

Note that these figures do not include the considerable amounts the parties raise and spend outside of election campaigns. For example, a recent story in the Tyee states that the BC Liberals raised $7.9M in 2008 and spent $8.5M, while the BC NDP raised $2.9M and spent $3.3M.

Another consideration is that in BC, parties spend much more in the few competitive ridings and largely ignore the safe ridings. In contrast, in Ireland all districts are competitive and parties have to spend comparable amounts of money everywhere.

In summary, for the same sized population, parties in Ireland spend less than 70% as much as BC parties to contest many more competitive seats. There is therefore no truth to opponents' claims that campaigning under STV will cost more than under our current flawed first-past-the-post system.

Did you know STV is used in over 340 jurisdictions in 7 countries?

The Single Transferable Vote, contrary to opponents' assertions that it's used in only two countries, is actually used in over 340 jurisdictions in at least seven countries around the world.

It's used in the following places (a good overview of the history and use of STV is available on Wikipedia):

There are some excellent articles on STV in practice in various countries available at the Electoral Knowledge Network's website. See in particular articles on Ireland (STV), Malta (STV) and Australia (Alternative Vote).

The ACE Project article on Ireland describes the conclusions of the 2002 all-party parliamentary committee, which considered the arguments for and against changing the system. It concluded that "the public was strongly attached to STV, that a change to any other system would reduce the power of the individual voter, and that some of the alleged failings of the political system for which critics blamed STV were caused by other factors. As this conclusion indicates, there is no significant body of opinion in favour of amending or replacing the existing system."

Our current inaccurate voting system is 6X less proportional than STV

Some people have argued that STV does not provide any system-wide guarantees of proportionality. Nonetheless, in practice, it is a highly proportional system. The plot below shows the Gallagher Index of Disproportionality for all the democratic nations with populations over 250,000 over the past 50 years. This plot shows that STV (yellow bars) delivers essentially the same level of proportionality as most of the nations that use list proportional representation systems (blue bars) and far less disproportionality (about one third as much) than the nations that use our current First Past the Post system (purple and red).

Disproportionality Index Plot

Gallagher's Disproportionality Index for 36 Democracies from 1945-1996. Data taken from an article by Prof. Arend Lijphart, Australian Democracy: Modifying Majoritarianism?, 1999. Yellow = STV, Orange = SNTV, Blue = List PR, Lavender = Alternative Vote, Purple = First Past the Post, Red = UK and Canada (Westminster-style parliament). BC has averaged a score of 20% over the past 25 years or so.

The Irish are strongly attached to STV

The Irish have twice rejected proposals by the political parties there to change from STV. See http://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/es/esy/esy_ie for details of the 1959 and 1968 referendums.

More recently, in 2002, Ireland had an All-Party Constitutional Review Committee review their electoral system. They concluded, among other things, that STV there has "manifest and well-recognized virtues, including proportionality, responsiveness to public choice, and continuity, which together have garnered for it substantial and enduring popular support." (http://www.constitution.ie/reports/7th-Report-Parliament.pdf, page 27). Over 75% of the politicians there ranked STV as their #1 choice for an electoral system (about 20% wanted either MMP or a party list system, and only 1% wanted to switch to First Past the Post).

Speaking of the proposed Mixed Member Proportional option they considered, the committee had the following to say: "significant elements of power and choice are removed from the voters in constituencies, and transferred to party leaders and managers, whose determination of the ordering of lists would normally be crucial. ... it seems highly unlikely that a change of this nature, which would be seen as advantaging parties and disadvantaging the individual voter, would be received well by the public" (p28).

The committee concludes that "no change [to STV] is necessary or desirable", arguing that "Finally, and decisively, there is no evidence of serious or widespread public discontent with the existing system: on the contrary, there is in our view a strong and enduring attachment to it. The fundamental and insurmountable argument against change is that the current Irish electoral system provides the greatest degree of voter choice of any available option. A switch to any other system would reduce the power of the individual voter" (p29).

Voter turnout is higher where STV is used

Almost everyone is concerned about low voter turnout rates in BC and Canada - the last election in BC produced a turnout of only 58% and the last federal election was at only 59%. Such low participation rates demonstrate that our key democratic institutions are losing some of their legitimacy. Would adopting BC-STV change that?

While there are no guarantees, we believe that the evidence is that it would. The noted political scientist, Arend Lijphart, addressed this issue in his 1999 book, Patterns of Democracy, in which he surveyed the results of over 50 years of elections in 36 western democracies. He concluded that, overall, countries with more proportional voting systems (what he termed 'consensus democracies') had a voting turnout 5-10% higher than that of majoritarian democracies such as Canada and the UK.

Why might this be so? A very plausible reason is that if your jurisdiction has a voting system in which your vote is more likely to affect the outcome, there is more incentive to vote. Since only 36% of votes were needed to determine the outcome in the 2005 BC election, vs about 81% if we had used BC-STV, BC-STV would clearly give your vote more impact.

Opponents respond (with some justification) that voter turnout is a complex issue and point out that voter turnout is declining even in countries that use STV. While true, the following chart shows that, overall, countries using STV and other more proportional systems such as MMP (mixed member proportional) have markedly higher voter turnout rates than countries such as Canada, the USA and the UK which use our significantly less representative First Past the Post voting system. Ireland with STV has had approximately the same turnout as the UK with FPTP, but seems to have avoided the downturn over the past decade that Canada and the UK have experienced. Generally speaking, Ireland has had about 10% higher turnout than BC over the past 25 years.

Turnout plot

In addition, voter turnout in Malta, which uses STV at the national level, is the highest in the world amongst countries with non-compulsory voting - 93-96%. In contrast, turnout in Canada places us about 80th in the world (see the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance website on voter turnout for historical details on a country-by-country basis).

Opponents sometimes point to New Zealand and try to claim that when they switched to a more proportional system for the 1996 election, it did not arrest the decline in voter turnout, but the chart shows that New Zealand still enjoys roughly an 80% turnout rate - little lower than under FPTP - so it is quite plausible to claim that switching to MMP likely reduced the decline in turnout that other western Commonwealth countries have experienced.

Given that BC-STV will more than double the number of votes that will have an effect on the outcome and that countries with more proportional voting systems generally enjoy a 5-10% higher voter turnout than countries using FPTP, supporters of the status quo must bear the burden of explaining why BC-STV will not have a positive impact on voter turnout here in BC.

Why The Maltese Would Riot Over BC Election Results

BC-STV opponents frequently point to the Maltese 'crisis' in 1986
as an example of 'distorted' outcomes under BC-STV, but they fail to
mention that all that happened then was that one party got 52% of the
seats on 49% of the vote, while another party got 48% of the seats on
51% of the vote. In other words, in Malta, a mere 3% difference between
vote share and seat share was enough to provoke a political crisis!
Meanwhile, here in BC, the *average* difference between vote share and seat share is 20%! If we were Maltese, there'd be rioting in the streets.

A minor difference in seat and vote share would never be
consequential here in BC, in the sense that one party would win a
majority government when it wins less of the popular vote than another
party, and the opponents know this. They're purposely misleading you.
Malta is a unique case because their population is hyper-polarized -
the two main parties typically win over 98% of the vote and tend to
split it almost perfectly evenly. That never happens in BC, where we
have a much more differentiated political culture and a strong showing
for smaller parties such as the Greens, Conservatives, Democratic
Reform and others, including independents such as Vicki Huntington and
Paul Nettleton.

In a replay of the infamous 1996 BC election where the NDP won a
majority on 39% of the vote to the Liberal's 42%, STV might possibly
have given the NDP 42% of the seats and the Liberals 39%, but would not
have delivered the NDP the 12% bonus they'd have needed to form a
majority government, so there would have been no crisis - the outcome
would have been essentially what the people voted for. Both the Reform
and Progressive Democratic parties would likely have won seats as well
in that election, and the leading party (likely the Liberals, since STV
is so proportional) would have had to have put together a working
coalition. The Maltese example is therefore irrelevant to BC.

 

It is also frequently said that "STV isn’t working for women in Malta!”

Opponents of STV frequently use Malta as evidence that BC-STV will be ‘bad for women’. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Malta, a small republic with the same
population of Surrey, does indeed have very few women in parliament. But
if you look closely, you’ll notice that they also don’t have many women
on the ballot in the first place. It’s not surprising considering that
only in recent years have women in Malta been allowed to retain their
maiden name or apply for a credit card. Malta also remains one of the very few nations that does not allow legal divorce.

Blaming
STV for the parliamentary make-up in Malta is a case of pointing the
finger in the wrong direction. Malta simply does not have a culture of
women participating in politics. Nevertheless, the evidence from Malta shows that when women are nominated, they are just as likely as men to win seats. If 7% of the candidates are women, then women win 7% of the seats under STV.