STV vs FPP for Wellington
Poneke has voted for STV in the Wellington referendum, despite earlier calling it a failure.
I blogged my views in March:
Now I actually support STV in many types of elections. In fact I introduced constitutional changes to InternetNZ so that candidates are elected by what is effectively STV, not FPP. National uses a form of STV for its internal elections for candidates and the board. I like and support STV in situations where it works well.
STV works well when the voter has a relatively small number of candidates to choose from, and they know most or all of the candidates. When you know the candidates you can quite easily make an intelligent choice about ranking X No 1, Y No 2 etc.
However STV is an unmitigated disaster for DHBs and a partial disaster for Councils. …
With regard to Councils, it is not quite as bad. I actually like STV for voting for the Mayor. There is only one position to fill and it is possible to fairly sensibly rank say half a dozen candidates for Mayor. I like being able to express a second and third preference should my first preference fail to be elected.
But then when you come to wards, it becomes near useless again because again not even the political geeks can sensibly rank say 15 people competing for three Council positions. And so we have a 10% fall in turnout over two elections. If you want to keep STV then you need small one person wards.
I could advocate STV for the Mayor, and FPP for Council but that may be too confusing. So if WCC is to have one electoral system only, then FPP is best.
My position has not changed. Sadly I am going to vote for FPP.
However my preference would be to have smaller single Councillor wards, as if that happened then I think STV would work fine for both Mayor and Council.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:08 am
It’s not STV when there is only one position to fill, it is Preferential Voting (PV)
[DPF: Yes and no. They actually use the full STV formula for the Mayor]
September 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am
beat me to it, emmess!
September 8th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
There is a serious problem with single councillor wards.
If your councillor is appointed to an RMA Hearings committee then you can no longer discuss with him or her any applications or other RMA matters which may come before him or her to be heard.
One solution is to have the Hearings all run by Commissioners.
But the other is to have a minimum of two councillors per ward to ensure people do not become disenfrachised on RMA matters.
This does not apply to hearings on Proposed plans or Plan Changes – just applications.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
DPF: Why not just rank your top 3, as you’re allowed to do?
[DPF: Because I normally have someone I want to rank bottom and you have to rank everyone in between then]
September 8th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
The point about it being a challenge to fairly rank 15 candidates is a reasonable one. But YOU DON’T HAVE TO. Picking your top three is quite good enough and surely that is no harder than picking three candidates to tick in an FPP election?
Note also: emmess is right. It’s not STV when there is only one position to fill, it is Preferential Voting (PV).
September 8th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Yes, but given that there will be no votes distributed from successful candidates who earned too many votes, it is identical to a preferential vote (the only votes redistributed are those from the candidates who are last after a round of counting).
September 8th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
In Aus, where I lived for the last four years, and they use STV to elect the Senate, there are typically dozens of people competing for six Senate slots at each election (unless it’s a double dissolution and all 12 Senators are being chosen at once – then things must get really silly). To avoid daunting voters with having to rank all of them, they’ve allowed for “above the line” voting there – essentially a ranking of the candidates in the order chosen by your political party of choice. I think at least 90% of valid ballots use above-the-line voting there.
I think that’s the only way a multi-member STV election is really feasible (especially if there are more than two or three spots up for grabs). Especially in a situation where the voting public is used to just ticking the boxes for their preferred candidates.
That presupposes, though, that a strong party system exists at the local body level. To the best of my knowledge, that’s not the case for local body elections (though I grew up in Christchurch, and I don’t know the situation in Wellington). And I’m not sure a strong party system could really exist for committees dealing with such glamorous issues as roads, parks and water supply.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
It’s not STV when there is only one position to fill, it is Preferential Voting
Preferential voting is simply STV in a single-member electorate.
As Mr Gronk above notes, Australia uses STV for the Senate. While they call the House voting system Preferential Voting, it has a similar ballot paper and way of voting to the Senate one and is counted in a similar way.