I am a resident of the US state of Pennsylvania and have taken
on myself the rather quixotic task of promoting STV in that state.
I do have a BC connection in that my wife's sister is a Canadian
citizen and a resident of the province.
At the outset, I feel that either MMP or STV is preferable to the
system of single member districts used in virtually all legislative
bodies in both the United States and Canada. Cutthroat winner-take
all politics has polarized the US and threatens the same in any
other country where it is practiced. As Richard M. Nixon said of it
'Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second
in politics gets you oblivion.'
My understanding of MMP is that it is merely the single-member
system with the proviso that each voter gets a vote (in addition to
the vote for his/her single member) on which party should control
the legislative chamber in question. If the voting for the single
members does not reflect the ratio of votes received for the
parties, then additional members are named from a party list to
balance the membership out to that ratio.
This system has several weaknesses:
-
The single member system still allows for spoiler candidates and
the election of members opposed by a majority of the voters in the
district.
-
The single- member system still encourages negative
campaigning.
The legislature may contain members who were not voted on as
individuals, but only as quasi-anonymous persons on a party
list.
-
Independent candidates are disadvantaged in the districts and
have no chance at all to be at large members based on the party
voting.
-
The constituent has only one local member whom he/she can
approach on a legislative or constituent service matter.
Having multi-member districts with STV (or perhaps cumulative
voting) give the constituent a greater likelihood of being
represented (at least in part) by a person with whom he feels a
political compatibility.
For the above reasons, despite its complexity, I feel that STV is a
superior system to MMP.
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