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Tom Monto

STV-MMP would be good fusion

STV provides local representation and also proportionality at the city level. STV can be combined with the proportional top-up that we see under MMP (FPTP-MMP).


I think these points should be emphasized --

New Zealand has now opened the door to STV at the city level (where MMP is not so useful), so perhaps meshing of STV and MMP could be in the future there and should not be ruled out here either;


multi-member districts are probably not even considered when discussion of local representation is considered but under STV, voters in each local constituency or riding should be able to elect MPs directly accountable to them, almost identical to how you FPTP is described, the difference being the number of district reps.


There would still be the local accountability - in fact more so as multiple candidate would run in each district for each major party and voters would have a choice even while supporting a party. Note too that what a local district varies. Three or more provincial districts can fit into what is now a federal riding. What is local at one level is illogically not thought of as local at the lower level.


Too if we look at Manitoba in the old days, the whole province excepting Winnipeg had 45 single-member rural districts in the 1920s, plus 10 seats in Winnipeg, to represent 220,000 voters in the province. Now it has 57 single-member districts representing 870,000 voters. 5000 voters per MLA in 1920; 15,000 voters per MLA in 2019. The ratio of voters to MLA is three times what it was; the area covered by each rural MLA is about the same or a bit larger.


If we look at Alberta, in 1913 the province had 56 MLAs, two in Edmonton (where 14,000 voters were listed as eligible), three in three Calgary single-member districts. 90,000 voters voted province-wide.


Now Alberta has 87 districts. It has 41 rural districts where there used to be 52. so like in Manitoba rural districts are larger than they were back in 1913. (I was actually thinking that rural districts would be more numerous and thus smaller than in the old days but find the opposite holds true!)


And also like in Manitoba the ratio of voters to MLAs is way different than a hundred years ago. 1.9M votes are now cast province-wide in Alberta. 22,000 per MLA, while in 1913 the ratio was 1600 per MLA. Today an MLA represents almost 14 times the number represented by each MLA in 1913.


And STV as used in Manitoba and Alberta did not obliterate local representation. only it put it logically on a city-wide basis -- a scale that was still local (as in the term "local news") while making it large enough to allow proportional rep.


Yes, any supplemental top-up would be great, even a non-compensatory parallel system would provide party rep at about one-third level of overall party-list PR. that is say any 3 percent of the overall vote is worth a seat, (the Alberta Party with 10 percent would have had three seats in top-up alone, instead of no seats at all), while under party-list PR at provincial level the vote needed to get one seat would be closer to 1 percent.


There is also the transparency of STV in its favour. under STV each city elects a mixture of reps, a group definitely and separately elected by each city. so no artificial creation of apparent regionalism even at city scale.


STV being at the district level means it can be brought in only where voters are in favour or where it works best. Overall approval in a province-wide referendum would not be required - although that is never required legally/constitutionally anyway. Victoria voters voted in favour of changing to PR in last referendum. A district level PR systems allows that it happen just in the one city, if there was the will.


And yes for a city, a party must get 10 to 20 percent of the city vote to get a seat, but of course that number of votes is fewer than five percent of the vote province-wide.


Direct local/city level representation is important as well as overall PR - measured by overall party vote. STV-MMP would have both, just as MMP (FPTP-MMP) and DMP would.

Those are a few of my thoughts, anyway.


Thanks for reading.

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