In more political news, the recent B.C. provincial election included a referendum question of whether B.C. should switch to proportional representation using the Single Transferable Vote (BC-STV) system. (The non-proportional representation version of Single Transferable Vote (STV) is also called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).) Unfortunately, the proposal failed to obtain the 60% supermajority required to pass, even though it got majority support.
While I support proportional representation, STV/IRV is suboptimal compared to something like Condorcet. (WikiPedia) However, Condorcet is more complicated than STV, and one news anchor that I saw said he didn’t understand STV. Also, it’s not completely obvious (to me at least) the correct way to adapt Condorcet to proportional representation. Then again, Condorcet results can usually be summarized in a simple table or graph, while STV cannot. But STV is better than the current first-past-the-post system – at least in the sense that it reflects voter preferences better. (First-past-the-post is the reason the U.S. is still effectively a two-party system.)
B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has said that based on the results, which still show strong support for BC-STV, he would bring the issue to legislature.
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