Malta 1981 in Canada debate

The debate in Canada over the Single Transferable Vote goes on as a referendum in British Columbia approaches. Dean from British Columbia links to this JKR post which discusses Malta's 1981 election experience. He also quotes Wolfgang Hirczy de Mino in his essay Malta: STV With Some Twists. From Dean rushes the vote:

The Nationalist Party obtained 50.9% of first-preferences, which translated into 31 seats (47.7%), the Malta Labor Party (MLP) meanwhile got 49.1% of first-preferences and 34 seats (52.3%). This crisis resulted in a change to Malta's constitution that "assures that the party with a majority of first-preference votes will receive as many additional seats as necessary to give it a majority in parliament". The Citizens' Assembly BC-STV system has no such assurance. It is possible with BC-STV that we will continue to have situations like the 1996 BC Election, where one party can get more seats with less votes. With BC-STV a party with less first-preferences can end up with more seats than a party with more first-preferences.BC-STV is not guaranteed to be proportional. With the added complexity of introducing computers to count our ballots *cough Diebold* or waiting days to count our ballots *cough "slow count has raised fears of tampering"


Polarised Politics - from Wired Temples

Single Transferable Vote - by Sue in Vancouver