The British Columbia NDP appears to have fended off the Conservative surge by a razor thin margin and will form the next provincial government, CBC News projects.
Whether the party forms a minority or majority government is still uncertain.
Maybe now the NDP will more seriously consider ranked choice voting.
Absolutely. STV is the dream system. Proportional representation but with fully local representatives.
My favourite feature is that it holds politicians directly accountable to their constituents. If you don’t know much about politics, you can just vote by party, like regular ranked ballot. But if you know more, you can rank individual party members against each other in the same party. There are no “safe” seats party insiders can hold to assure being elected, keeping everyone accountable.
MMP either has party lists (and its potential for corruption from seeking higher list rank from the party), or systematically over-represents areas with more fractured political views. MMP also can lead to more fracturing of parties, since you only need a very small percentage of votes to get 1 seat, instead of 20%+ (locally) to qualify for a seat in STV. We don’t need single-issue fringe parties holding the deciding vote(s) to get to a majority coalition government able to force a snap election at any time!
We had what, three, referendums about it and people voted against it every time. It’s mind-boggling.
Voters were asked whether they would prefer to keep the existing first-past-the-post system or move to one of three forms of proportional representation.
I found the article from the last one, if anyone is interested: CBC article
I am beyond relieved that the NDP stayed in :D