It seems the 2018 BC referendum question was set by the Fraser Institute.
It was unduly complicated. In 2005, 58 percent of the electorate had voted in favour of reform, including a majority of voters in 77 ridings out of 79, on a simple question of change or not. But it was overruled by a government that itself had been elected by only 58 percent of the vote in 2001 -- and was re-elected to majority government in 2005 with only 46 percent of the vote!
But in 2018 the referendum was a complicated two-step question with the last question being decided by transferable vote among three options each having two parts.
And we see that the Fraser Institute had suggested the style of question. This is not surprising as it generally opposed democratic reforms.
We can be confident the think-tankers there were well pleased when a only minority of voters took the plunge to vote for change.
The Fraser Institute called for the complicated question format in its work
Consequences of Electoral reform in BC (Fraser Institute 2018).
From chapter "Designing a Referendum Question for British Columbia," by Lydia Miljan and Geoffrey Alchin:
"Moreover, in order to have a legitimate consultation with the public, the government should adopt a two-part referendum that first asks BC voters if they want a change at all, and then, if the first question indicates that they do, which specific electoral system they want. This process is preferable to asking for a straight vote on the proportional system."
Preferable to whom?
Obviously to those who want the drive to fail.
Thanks for reading.
================================================
What was BC STV that the votes actually voted on?
The BC STV that was on the ballot in 2004 and in 2018 was one where surplus votes wree to be transferred using the WIGM - the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method.
====
How BCSTV (2004) described Gregory
BCSTV technical report ("Appendix: glossary") says this:
Gregory (method)
In counting votes under a single transferable vote system, if a candidate has more than the minimum number of votes needed to be elected (see Droop quota), a procedure is needed to allocate the surplus votes to other candidates. The may be done by taking a number of ballots equal to the surplus at random from the ballots of the successful candidate and assigning votes to the next available preference shown on the ballot (that is, to candidates who have not already been elected or excluded).
[no mention here of a successor to the random method -- the "exact method" AKA the British-Irish-Canadian whole-vote method. This is the method used in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg to elect MLAs from the 1920s to the 1950s. and obviously, as the name indicates, is used in Irish elections - and Malta elections - and has been since the 1920s.
It was also the method used in city elections in Vancouver, Victoria and several other BC cities in 1910s or 1920s. (It should not have been ignored!
see my Montopedia blog "Timeline of electoral reform" (footnote) for info. on this method.]
In 1880, J.B. Gregory contended that this process of random selection could produce varying results depending on the choice of the randomly selected ballots used for making the transfers to other candidates. He suggested that all the relevant ballots should be recounted, assigned to other candidates according to the preferences of the voters, but at a reduced value called the transfer value. The transfer value is calculated by dividing the surplus votes by the total number of relevant votes.
There are three variations of the Gregory method which differ as to the definition of ‘relevant votes’ for calculating the transfer value.
[1] Gregory’s original suggestion was that only the ballots that last contributed to the creation of the surplus votes should be counted (the Gregory last parcel method).
[2] Some Australian elections use a second method, the Inclusive Gregory method, where relevant votes are defined as all the votes that contributed to a candidate’s surplus.
[3] The BC-STV system recommended by the Citizen’s Assembly uses the Weighted Inclusive Gregory method under which all votes are counted and assigned to other candidates still in the count according to the voters’ preferences, but the ballots are given separate transfer values depending on their origin (that is, whether they are first preferences, or transfers from one or more other candidates).
The Citizens’ Assembly decided that the Weighted Inclusive Gregory method was most in keeping with the goals of proportional representation by the single transferable vote, was fairer to the voters than the other options, and did not add significantly to the task of counting (or recounting) ballots."
That seems pretty good description of the three sorts of Gregory method.
but here (and everywhere else in the technical report) there is no mention of the number of decimal points to be used or the use or not of whole-vote reporting of vote tallies, and perhaps many other technical details ].
======================
The Question of the Quota
I also see this fault in the description of the operation of the quota:
[No. 8] "When all but one of the candidates to be elected from the district have been elected, and only two candidates remain in the count, the candidate with the most votes is declared elected, even though the candidate may not have reached the minimum number of votes (the quota) needed to be elected."
when is a minimum not a minimum? When you can be elected with less!
When actually a quota is the amount that is certain to elect the candidate, but it is posisble to be elected with less- at the end when the field of candidate is thinned to the number of remaining open seats.
=========================
I wonder what evidence was given the Citizens Assembly to make it choose the WIGM, of all the methods possible to conduct transfers of surplus votes.
Were its members ever told that actually vote transfers make little difference to the candidates alredy leading in the first count?
So why use the most complicated of all the methods possible, ofr an infinentimal rise in repreatablitlity of results?
why use the so much exactitude just to reduce to the lowest amount the possible element of chance?
What led them to do such a thing?
==============================
Comments