I have just read the submission by Colleen McCrory (the Chair of
the B.C. Green Party). See
MCCRORY
1231.
Colleen McCrory had a very interesting discussion with a leading
figure in the Irish Green Party about the election system in the
Republic of Ireland.
Colleen McCrory strongly opposes STV; hence, I found the contents
of this submission very interesting.
Rather than suggesting the replacement of STV by MMP with SMP in
the first tier, this leading individual in the Irish Green Party
suggested keeping STV for selecting about 75% of the seats in a
first tier and adding a compensatory second tier of list PR seats
for the remaining 25% of the seats.
The following is a direct quotation from Colleen McCrory's
submission:
"We asked the representative of the Green Party about how he
thought their voting system could be improved."
"Question - 'If you could change your voting system, would you? To
what?'"
"Answer - 'The only change I would make might be to elect maybe 2/3
or 3/4 of seats by the current PR-STV system and have it topped up
by a list system. There is a strong argument that PR-STV encourages
"parish-pump" politics. Especially when candidates from the same
party must vie for votes. They can't openly disagree on policy so
they have to give the impression of being best at "getting things
done" locally.'"
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