Presentation for Vancouver’s city council

Here’s the presentation on electoral reform I’m going to try to give to Vancouver’s city council. The two key ideas are reducing the scope to the municipal level and replacing STV with Ranked Pairs, which is arguably easier to explain. I feel like a small fish in a big pond getting involved in city politics like this, but I believe that this is a change in the right direction.

Update

The most convincing argument I’ve heard against this is that Ranked Pairs isn’t a proportional system. Its PR extension, CPO-STV, is obviously too complex. On the other hand, STV falls apart when electing one candidate (in the case of the mayor). Two systems isn’t an option, so what then? For now, I’ll just hold off and talk with others before taking this further.

2 Responses to “Presentation for Vancouver’s city council”

  1. Howard Cherniack  on August 23rd, 2009

    I’m afraid that I don’t see that this option is any easier to explain or count than STV, and, if one were to go to single-member constituencies (which are problematic at best in terms of representation), it would seem that the Alternative Vote (=STV with single-member constituencies; eliminates strategic voting but does not ensure proportional representation) would be a lot easier and fairer.

    Unfortunately, the fix is in: the Left has long been invested in a “ward system” (single-member constituencies elected by FPTP), and this was endorsed by the City commission on electoral reform a few years ago. (Ironic: the push is on for replicating on a municipal level the provincial and federal system we are finding so unsatisfactory.) I can’t see that any other electoral system stands a chance as an alternative to the current 10-member FPTP we now have. Sorry.

  2. Brad Beattie  on August 24th, 2009

    “AV (aka IRV, aka STV@1) eliminates strategic voting.”

    It doesn’t, nor does the system I propose. Indeed, no system is immune to strategic voting (Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem). It can also be reasonably demonstrated where IRV breaks down. The underlying issue with that aggregate system is that it can ignore the secondary preferences of large demographics. I get that it’s better than FPTP, but I wouldn’t claim that it’s ideal.

    I get that people are entrenched in their ideas and I’m willing to stand behind any of them that improve the system that we have now. However, I don’t see how that precludes me from describing a better system.


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