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BC-STV and the single transferable voteThe Citizens' Assembly recommends BC-STV as the best electoral
system for British Columbia.
BC-STV stands for British Columbia single-transferable vote
system. To help make this decision, the members used three values
identified by British Columbians as being important to any
electoral system: local representation, proportionality and voter
choice.
>> BC-STV or PR-STV?
The technical name of the system recommended for British
Columbia is PR-STV, or proportional representation by the single
transferable vote. PR-STV is a family of systems rather than one
system. The members of this family are very closely
related but they differ a little at the edges. This means that they
all subscribe to the same principles, but some of the details vary.
BC-STV was designed to meet the specific needs of British Columbia.
Caution should be used in taking information from other countries
and applying it to British Columbia.
>> CITIZENS' ASSEMBLY RESOURCES
A
definition of single transferable vote (STV) from the Assembly
glossary
Fact sheets on the Assembly's recommended BC-STV
model, as well as BC's current SMP
system
A fact sheet on how votes are
counted in the BC-STV system.
A flow-chart diagram
showing how the basic counting concept works.
A set of animations that look
at BC-STV and B.C.'s current First Past the Post system
And a precise and detailed example of
counting under BC-STV, using the Weighted Inclusive Gregory method
of handling transfers of "surplus votes".
A
backgrounder on the Assembly and BC-STV
Frequently asked
questions about BC-STV
And, a general fact sheet about the PR-STV electoral
system family, one of 14 fact sheets
available
STV learning materials from Week 4 of the learning
phase (February 21, 2004):
The Assembly's decision to recommend STV:
>> GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT PR-STV
A brief
description of PR-STV from the ACE project
A flow-chart diagram
showing how the basic counting concept works.
>> MORE DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT
PR-STV
The Irish
electoral database provides an animation to show how
preferences were distributed in each multimember district for the
last few Irish general elections. When you enter the
site, pick an electoral district (top left pulldown menu) and then
press 'next count' repeatedly to see the transfer of
preferences. Note that some electoral districts have 4
members, some 3 and some 5.
For very detailed descriptions of PR-STV systems in Australia,
see this
Australian Electoral Council webpage. This site is
heavy on the technical details and - a caution here - it describes
PR-STV electoral systems with features that the Citizens' Assembly
has not not included or has varied in the version recommended for
British Columbia (as in the case for filling casual vacancies, for
example). This site can be helpful but it should be
used with care when assessing PR-STV for BC.
With the same caution as mentioned above, the Tasmanian
and
Australian Capital Territory electoral office sites
have a useful description of PR-STV (often called the Hare-Clark
system in Australia) as used in these jurisdictions.
During the counting of an STV election, a candidate may receive
more than the minimum number of votes required to win a
seat in that district. The excess votes are known as "surplus
votes". To ensure that everyone's votes count toward
electing a candidate, there are a variety of ways
to transfer of these surplus votes in a fair
and repeatable method. The following academic article reviews a
change in procedure for transferring vote surpluses made
to the Australian Senate’s STV electoral system in
1983. Read this
article, by David Farrell and Ian McAllister, from the Australian
Journal of Political Science - who also provides a
free electronic table of contents alerting service
for a variety of academic journals.
>> STV FOR BC: IN THE NEWS
Citizens' Assembly news
release recommending STV as the best electoral
system for BC
Recent articles about the Citizens'
Assembly
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