Ireland or Malta

October 26, 2004

Counting Ballots takes a Mathematician

It's not "as easy as 1, 2, 3." It takes a mathematician to understand how elections would work under the system recommended by the Citizens' Assembly. Using something called the Droop Quota, the method for counting ballots determines how many it takes to win and then redistributes ballots, not only for the losers, but also any beyond the minimum it takes to get elected. That is an enormous step from the easy to understand method where the person with the most votes wins. The system was designed in 1868 by mathematician Henry Richmond Droop. Click here and scroll down to see tables that provide examples of the Hare Quota and the Droop Quota; that is what has to be explained to BC voters before they participate in the May 17th referendum. Good luck!

Click here to see the legislation governing how Ireland counts votes.

Extensive coverage of the decision of the Citizens' Assembly to recommend a single transferable vote system (STV) and of Green Party Leader Adriane Carr's decision to oppose it has provided much background on the process that led to the recommendation but little to explain how the system will work beyond how ballots are cast. Voting under the system is easy; the hard part is to understand how votes are counted and what the effects of boundary changes are.

The Citizens' Assembly website contains a wealth of information, so much that it is hard to find a simple explanation of their recommendation. You will find their new, "it's as simple", slogan but you won't easily find details on their recommendation. The following is from the slide presentation that summarized their version of STV. We'll have to wait to see what they put out to explain the Droop Quota and what it means for BC elections. Keep in mind that BC has over 30 registered parties. Future ballots might make municipal elections with their complicated ballots in Vancouver look simple.

October 25, 2004

Citizens' Assembly - Ireland or Malta

"By consensus, the Assembly members proposed 2-3 MLAs for Northern and remote ridings, and as many as seven in dense urban areas. Riding boundaries would have to be redrawn by a provincial boundaries commission."
Citizens' Assembly, October 24, 2004

Who would have guessed that the Citizens' Assembly would favour a system used in Malta and Ireland? Malta has a population of just fewer than 400,000; at just under 4 million, Ireland has a population only slightly smaller than BC's. In addition to sharing a unique voting system, both countries are over 90% Roman Catholic; other than that it may be hard to find many similarities.

Captured at the Wosk Centre by Global TV, Green Party Leader Adriane Carr expressed her disappointment with the Assembly's conclusion. Other British Columbians will probably be confused. A website is available which attempts to simulate the "Single Transferable Vote" (STV) system as used in Ireland, but it is a safe bet that few will see it and fewer yet will be enlightened by it.

Are British Columbia voters so upset with provincial politics that they are willing to buy a pig in a poke? The Citizens' Assembly stresses that over 90% of their members voted for their recommendation, but would they have done the same thing a year ago? Is the outcome the result of an extraordinarily political experiment, or is it "Stockholm syndrome"? After months of tutoring by the Assembly's staff, it can be argued that its members no longer reflect a random selection of British Columbians. The process made them captives of their experience; their recommendation is likely to go to a referendum with few voters understanding the implications of their proposed change.

It is clear from the Assembly's news release that their recommendation will go to a vote without being complete. It will take a boundaries commission to determine whether Vancouver is a single consistency with six, seven or eight MLAs. If you think the civic at large system is difficult, wait until you see a provincial election with those rules! The Assembly appears willing to have British Columbians vote on whether their recommendation should be adopted without knowing whether Interior consistencies will be two or three times larger than their federal cousins. That's not good enough; when voters go to the polls on May 17th to vote in the referendum as well as in the provincial election, they deserve to know precisely what the alternative is, and what the consequences are of voting for that alternative. It is not good enough to say visit Ireland or Malta.