[B.C. Single transferable vote referendum]

Assuming you have each Party presenting an equal number of candidates in the electoral district , wouldn't most people just vote for all the candidates in their favourite Party?  What is the advantage to that?  How does it improve the democratic process.

Thanks again, ad hats off to BC for having both fixed date elections ad looking into this reform.

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With regard to the improvement, I guess it is so that people can assign their "2" to a candidate they like rather than following their partisan tendencies. *shrug*

And yes... the fixed election date is a great idea IMHO. That should be addopted on the federal stage.

[B.C. Single transferable vote referendum]

Could you summarize the proposed system for the ignorant like myself?

Whatever the outcome, I am thrilled to see somebody, anybody, try to change the face of democracy in this country.

Our old system no longer serves us well.

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First, let me say that I do not consider anyone who does not understand this "ignorant". I am sure my understanding of this is flawed as there is much room for error. I believe that a portion of the people responsible for promoting this referendum may well not understand it.

For starters, here's a few web links. This first one has a nice simulation applet. The "Yes" camp's site. This site may be hard to look at but has tons of info.

Basically, rather than simply having he who gets to most votes win, the entire constituency, ballot, and seating changes. The province gets divided into electoral district, (see this example) each with a number of legislative seats available and a number of candidates. Then, when voting, the voter, rather than simply checking only one candidate, supplies (may supply really) a ranking of candidates in order of preference. I.E. Put a "1" beside your favorite candidate, a "2" beside your second choice, and so on. At the end of the day, there is a brutal iterative counting process best demonstrated in the applet referred to above. In a nutshell, by summing the ballots and dividing by the number of seats, you get a number of votes that a winning candidate must meet or exceed. Now, when say 100 votes go to a given candidate, but only 48 are needed for the win, the second choice on ballots are taken iinto play. In this way, all the people who cast a now-unnecessary "1" for the winning candidate do not have their votes wasted. Instead, their "2" candidate votes are counted along with the "1's" from the ballots that shared the former "2's" candidate. *Blah* I hope that follows. This process continues until all choices are counted, winning candidates are assigned.

David Suzuki attempted to explain this on CBC last night to no avail, and seeing my explanation, I am sure you can see room for failure in explaining. The best way to understand it is to work through a mock election with very few candidates/parties/ballots in a single electoral district. This was totally skipped in the nice glossy mailout from the government.

Does this shed light on the process to your satisfaction?

[B.C. Single transferable vote referendum]

Hello,

Not sure if this topic has been covered here before, but here goes.

As everyone here knows I am sure, the up-coming BC provincial election will include a referendum on whether or not BC should adopt a Single Transferable Vote (SVT) voting system. Although much fanfare surrounded the public consultation process and their results, very little information has been made available to the public, at least not to those unwilling to dig for it. The government sent out a large glossy mailout at great expense that took great care to avoid all the important details of the proposed system such as the counting system, the core of the entire system. This handout barely adequately described our current system and attempted to explain everything anecdotally. I think we have a very scary situation coming here: a referendum where a LARGE majority understand squat about what they are voting on.

However, I digress. Giving that I, and I am sure many here, actually understand the counting process, I would like to hear opinions on the actual effect of this new process should it be adopted. Specifically, what effect will this have on the weight of BC residents outside of the lower mainland? You hear talk of STV further marginalizing the voters outside of Vancouver and Victoria. I have a hard time believing they can really be further marginalized, but what do folks here think? Is this just the spouting of alarmists or does “rural” BC stand to lose some of their already-limited clout?

[The Liberal Love-in]

I have said that it was a gross misuse of provincial tax funds for one leader to take public stands against the Registry: to actually encourage civil disobedience by saying that it would not be implemented in his province.

At some point civil disobedience is the last resort to counter something you are against and have no other recourse to stop. Someone needs to lead the charge. But in the long run, that was not what I think the motivation was.

What Ralph did was no worse than the federal liberals... he used the passion of the people on this topic as a popularity grab. This is easy to do as many outside the cities see the Gun Registry as nothing more than a tax on rural Canada and political pandering to the scared masses in Canada's biggest cities where the registry's major support comes from. Yet another example of western and rural alienation we keep hearing about. Perhaps some money was lost to the opposition, but it is far from the first and definitely not the last time we will see bad decisions made a bit worse for political gain.

[CBC and bias]

Pretty much anything... just some variety.

[High Taxes Send Companies Away]

So-called "brain-drain" is not a major problem with respect to Canadian wealth migrating out of the country. Stats Can has some good articles on the topic. Here's a nice abstract:

Brain Drain and Brain Gain

[CBC and bias]

Can you give some examples? What's a "leftist issue" anyway?

By "leftist" I mean the core socialist issues... health care, the poor, minorities, special interest groups and organized labour. The grass roots of the NDP. Not that they are not important areas to cover, but listen to CBC for a year and you will hear that and inordinate portion of their air time devoted to these areas. Perhaps I am just a little tired of hearing the same stories all the time and have just become overly sensitive to these topics and therefor notice them more. But that's my take anyway.

[CBC and bias]

Seriously: what do you mean by "relevant" programmming?

By relevant, I should say "more broad-spectrum". In the long run, I have nothing personal against gays, feminists, literature or art. There is a fairly long list of heavily left-leaning topics of which literature or art may or may not belong to; perhaps those in particular are poor examples, the result of a hasty choice of words. I am by no means suggesting the elimination of any of these topics either as this would destroy the relevance for a certain portion of our population. I guess it is easier for me to identify the irrelevant than the relevant.

I used to look to CBC for decent current events and world affairs coverage. Now it seems that whatever the "hot" issue of last week happened to be leads to saturation of particular topics at the expense of all others. In the end, they are beating a dead horse (or mad cow). Other than the latest greatest story (tsunami, gay marriage, mad cow), a large portion of the CBC's broadcast time is devoted to leftist issues, presented from a leftist point of view, with opposing views often given the short end of the stick.

I guess in the long run, I just feel they are reaching for content and could turn somewhere besides the socialist issues for it.

[CBC and bias]

CBC is not sympathetic towards the Liberals, it goes the extra mile for the NDP, which makes sense since it is a socialist party and the CBC would stand to benefit the most by a ruling NDP party.

This is a prime example of what makes me disappointed with the CBC. Although I do not regularly watch CBC television (The National is about it) I do listen to CBC radio quite often. As someone who has listened to the CBC since I was a kid, at least 20 years, I have noticed some major changes in this regard. As recipients of government spending, they have always leaned to the left. This is fine... as with any news source, a degree of bias is expected, and what better direction to lean the bias than the hand that feeds. However, other than the news components, the CBC broadcasts have become unlistenable at times due to their heavy concentration on leftist issues and political correctness. If you are not gay or feminist with an interest in art, literature and fringe music, much of their programming is irrelevant.

I have no problem supporting the CBC with my tax dollars as I value their news, but come one, let's see some relevant programming. It would be nice to see their programming not just harp on those who woud cut their funding and praise those that would give it. In the end, it is paid for by us and should not be simply an expensive NDP (and other leftists) campaign ad.

I have seen some folks in this particular discussion trash the bias held by CBC news, but I would urge those readers to take a look at what many others have to listen to and watch. The BBC is pretty good, but aside from that, it is very difficult to find only semi-biased news.