BC people who plan to vote (and I really hope you plan to vote.) There’s a referendum attached, about the Single Transferable Vote.
This explains it better than I could. STV for the win!
Why do I support it? My own political preferences aside, let’s take a look at the 2001 election. The formerly popular NDP had been hit by scandal after scandal, and the Liberal’s won a roaring landslide and had 77 of 79 seats.
The catch? They only won 59% of the popular vote. The increase to the number of votes from the previous election was about 15%. The increase to the number of seats was 133%. Explain to me how this is fair representation? How can someone with 59% of the vote get 97% of the seats?
Of course, then you’ve got the “No to STV” advocates using this particular argument, I’m assuming so that our hockey-loving population can nod their heads and go “Yeah! Grunt, grunt!” (apologies to hockey fans — don’t blame me, it’s the No-STV folks who think you’re idiots, not me), and all I can do is hit my head against the wall repeatedly.
Sadly, when I saw STV, I assumed this was a post about Stranglethorn Vale. =(
I’ll be voting for the STC, but when I consider the fact that it will do a better job of giving us the government we deserve, I cry a little.
The NDP *should* have been wiped out in the year in question: they were an *awful* administration. We should still be punishing them now for their staggering mixture of incompetence, corruption, and greed. Yet only a 15% swing? What the hell were people smoking?
Jeff: Well, because most of us disagreed with your analysis. ;)
Well, they should. Really, I voted for Harcourt; I’m not a knee-jerk NDP-baiter, but it took the Social Credit party 30 years of nearly uninterrupted power to reach the level of arrogance, incompetence and corruption that the Glen Clark administration achieved in two abbreviated terms.
And I don’t hate Glen Clark for it; he snuck in the back door and stepped on a lot of NDP toes doing so. But during the three years that he was clearly out of control, clearly running the province into the ground, and clearly attempting to bully and intimidate anyone he couldn’t buy, the only people with the power to do anything about him were the upper ranks of the NDP itself — I don’t mean the MLAs, I mean the party administration — and they sat on their hands. And THAT is why I have never and will never forgive them.