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Submission RONBACK-0271 (Online)

Submission By Jim Ronback
AddressTsawwassen, BC, Canada
Organization
Date20040503
CategoryElectoral system change
Abstract
STV makes sense for BC and the rest of Canada. It will help to eliminate situations were the provincial/ federal party leader undemocratically overrides the local choice of a candidate to represent the party in a given constituency. [1 page]

Submission Content
A Single Transferable Vote system is highly recommended for BC since it has the highly desireable attribute in that there is no safe seat into which an unelectable candidate can be parachuted by a party.

New Zealand has approved a Single Transferable Vote using Meek's method for the local authority elections in 2004. Meek's method has not, to their knowledge, been used in a public election anywhere in the world and they cannot call on prior experience to assist in the implementation of New Zealand STV. Meek's method requires the use of specialised computer software hand-counting of votes is not feasible. See:


Also Meek's algorithm sometimes violates the criterion of repeatability in that in the case of a rare tie and a rare recount, identical results may not be replicated. This is because a tie is broken by a pseudo-random device (e.g., a flip of a coin if done manually). This minor shortcoming may be overcome by using Gregory's method to transfer the surplus - but this needs to be confirmed.

A STV using Meek's or Gregory's method makes sense for BC and the rest of Canada. It will help to eliminate situations were the provincial / federal party leader undemocratically overrides the local choice of a candidate to represent the party in a given constituency.

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