Apparently We're Too Dumb for Voter Reform

[bcholmes]

Unlike the status quo -- the candidate with the most votes wins -- Single Transferable Vote cannot be fully understood in 10 seconds. This is not to suggest that something that's easy to explain is necessarily best.

But for political science professors, policy wonks, and earnest citizens who take their civic duties seriously enough to figure it out, complexity is not a problem. For citizens whose daily bread is not politics, it is.

Calgary Herald

Here's my "elevator pitch":

Today, when you go to the polls, you usually have a clear idea about who you prefer to win, and who your second and possibly third choice is as well. But you can only vote for one, so you make some strategic decisions, and choose someone who you think is most likely to win. Under Single Transferable Voting, you don't bother with the strategic decisions: you just mark the candidates you want to win, and the order of preference. If there's a candidate you don't want to win, don't mark anything beside that candidate. The people who run the elections use a laborious but straight-forward math formula to figure out who the winner should be.

One could make arguments about whether or not STV is the right type of voter reform. I'm not interested in that discussion right now. I am, however, getting pretty tired of all the articles that keep drilling this same message: voter reform is too hard; just stop trying.

Comments

[erik]

*pat* *pat* Don't you worry your pretty little head about it, dear.

[aquaeri]

Well, the Australian political system hasn't collapsed in a screaming heap yet. And as far as I can tell, it's the right wing of Australian politics that wants to change voting (although they're keen to get rid of mandatory voting) which suggests to me we're on the right track here.