Well, no, it is not. There’s no particular reason why the mathematics of STV would work out to the same as “proportional representation,” or as I prefer to call it, party percentage, voting.
Interesting that BC stuck with FPTP. Here in Ontario we did the same. There are arguments either way but proponents of electoral reform have done an awful job selling it.
No one said it does work out to the same. That’s why I said for all intents and purposes. The key selling point of the STV system is that it produces results that are usually significantly closer to proportional than FPTP does. If you’re suggesting that that isn’t the case, maybe you could point us in the direction of some data to that effect?
Martin Enfield are you obliged to give preferences to every party or candidate running? In Ireland we can give preferences to as many or as few as we like.
Well, those groups get represented in our FPTP system down here:
Extreme Religious Fundies–power through the GOP
Special/Minority Interest Groups–power through either party, depending on which group
As a Tree Patter-on-the-Shoulder, at least, I think it’s entirely reasonable to let votes pick more than one party that they’d find acceptable. For me, that’s Greens, Democrats, & maybe Reform. For someone else, that may be GOP & Libertarians.
We are obliged in Australia to number every single box - if you don’t, your ballot is spoiled.
There was some well-known drama about this a few years ago (“put the bastards equal last” was the slogan - the campaign was to encourage people to prevent their preferences going to either party. The law has since been revised to ensure this is not a legal voting method)
On the other hand, if you vote for the Silly Party, you are in no way obliged to put the Cat Haters Party second, even if the Silly Party did “direct preferences” to them - you are perfectly free to give the number 2 slot to the Ambivalent Party or whoever.
Personally, I love STV for single member electorates, since it enables you to vote for a minor party without people griing at you that you’ve “wasted your vote” (which is bollocks anyway IMNSHO unless you’re thinking really short term). Multi member electorates are different - in this country the preferential voting for the senate has effectively turned into a single vote system anyway, because a multi-member ballot is so long-winded that 95% of voters don’t bother directing their own preferences and let the candidates do it for them. But in a single member electorate you’ve usually only got about 6 or 7 numbers to fill in - that’s not so hard!
When the Australian Capital Territory (roughly equivalent to the District of Columbia in the US) were forced to adopt self-determination (yes, you read that correctly) the first ballot papers included:
The No Self Government Party
The Sun-Ripened Warm Tomato Party
The Party! Party! Party
The Surprise Party
and others of that ilk. The best bit is that the No Self Government Party (whose charter was that if elected they would abolish self government) did get a member elected, who proceeded to participate in that government oblivious to his own party’s name and platform.