November 2022
Here's a petition for STV in Canadian federal elections to be put forward by Green Party MP Elizabeth May.
Here's the promo:
Whereas:
The single transferable vote is a fair compromise for Canadians who support proportional representation, Canadians who oppose proportional representation but would support a riding-centric proportional system, and Canadians who oppose proportional representation but would support an electoral system with a preferential ballot;
Under the single transferable vote, most voters would be ideologically represented by someone from their local multi-winner riding, allowing their ideological views on national and local issues to be heard;
Under the single transferable vote, candidates would generally be elected on the basis of their individual characteristics and not just because of their political affiliation;
The single transferable vote would lead to greater cross-party collaboration during election campaigns, as different political parties may decide to collaborate and ask their voters to rank their candidates highly so that at least one candidate from any of these parties meets the quota to be elected in a riding;
The single transferable vote would lead to electoral support for the different political affiliations in each riding to be accurately reflected; and
The single transferable vote would allow the party caucuses of parties with high national electoral support to be regionally diverse, leading to increased national unity.
We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to implement the single transferable vote with: multi-winner ridings that have between 3 and 7 MPs each, single-winner ridings for the Territories and the riding of “Labrador”, the use of the Weighted Inclusive Gregory method for the transfer of surplus votes, and the separation of candidates on the ballot by political affiliation (using separate columns).
(from https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4186)
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I signed it.
I hear a chorus of "What a surprise."
I like the way it says STV is likely to appeal to those who want PR [of any sort], those who like ranked voting, and those who don't want [party-list] PR but would support riding-centric PR system.
Where the proposal says
"The single transferable vote would lead to electoral support for the different political affiliations in each riding to be accurately reflected; "
it could have said
"The voter's single vote in a multi-member riding - and that vote being a ranked ballot - would lead to the diverse electoral support for multiple and various political affiliations in each riding to be accurately represented;"
or something like that.
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The STV system proposed is to have districts of 3-7 members, with allowance for single-member districts in the Territories and Labrador (what one could call the one-member areas actually named in the Confederation list of provinces and territories).
The Newfoundland part of Newfoundland and Labrador then would have one riding of 6 members or perhaps two ridings of three.
do-able. the Island is 100,000 sq. kms in area and 500,000 population.
average size of current single-member ridings in the provinces is 19,000 kms
Canada's total 10M sq kms minus Northern Canada 's 3.5M sq kms =
6.5M divided by 335 = 19,000.
so average riding in the provinces is 19,000 sq. kms.
But all the urban ridings are considerably smaller than 19,000 sq. kms
and
most of the rural ridings are considerably larger.
Nine single-member ridings in the provinces are larger than 200,000 sq. kms in size
4 others are larger than 100,000 sq kms -
About 8 more current ridings are larger than three average ridings put together (57,000 sq. kms).
So currently 21 ridings in the provinces are larger than three average ridings put together.
so the new ridings should not be criticized for having an un-manageable size.
in 24 cases (including the Territories) one member currently represents that size area or more.
and under the new STV system, at least three members will represent the area that 24 members now manage to do single-handedly.
(Lumping the super-sized ridings that already exist in the provinces into multi-seat district may be hard-sell but that is overlooked in the proposal.)
PEI would be one riding of 4 seats.
the 3- to 7-seat ridings in the other provinces could be based on cities, or on counties in some cases, or outside the cities, it could be simple lumping of three current adjacent ridings.
Even if a district only has 3 seats, any candidate that takes 25 percent of the district vote will take a seat, or in some cases even if only comes close to it, and there is nothing any other voting bloc can do about it.
any party where voters rank candidates of same party will take a seat if it makes up 25 percent of the district.
No party can take all the district seats unless it has more than 75 percent of the votes or thereabouts.
in a 7-seat district the percentage needed to take a seat drops to about 13 percent.
And the amount needed to take all the seats in a district rises to 87 percent.
if a district in a province produces mixed representation, then a province does as well,
thus preventing such things as PEI's and Saskatchewan's current one-party sweeps.
I personally don't see why the proposal prescribes WIGM for transfer of surplus votes but that is in line with James Gilmour's recently-shared piece on STV for Wales* in which he says any system that has element of random-ness in it is not appreciated.
I think whole-vote transfers as once used in western Canada (barring Calgary's city STV) is good enough but whatever.
Let's hope May gets some attention.
And hope the NDP leans to adopt STV, or STV in a MMP system as well.
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* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350495590_Review_of_some_aspects_the_Single_Transferable_Voting_system_for_local_elections_in_Wales
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