14 Good Reasons for Adopting STV for your local authority

Note: On 25 July, Cr Northey moved that the Auckland City Council undertake public consultation prior to voting on the STV option. The motion failed and the Auckland City Council voted to retain FPP.

1. Increases the community's feeling of democratic participation and representation and reduces alienation from their local authority because the great majority of the people will have had their vote actually elect somebody to the local authority who can act as their representative and voice on the Council.

2. In single member wards and elections for Mayor, they must secure a majority vote after preferences so most will feel that that representative is their and gives much more legitimacy to the views and actions of Mayors and Councillors in single member wards.
3. In multi-member wards, most interest and viewpoints will gain representation fairly and proportionately, providing much more buy-in from the community and fair representation for the elected representatives.
4. The community itself, through its voting choice, decides which groups and interests are most important to them and should be represented. The most important interests to them could well be geographical communities, as are currently provided for through wards and will also emerge through STV. However, the most important interests they want to represent them could be Maori (which they could as validly achieve through STV as through Maori Wards), Pacific Island or Asian counterbalancing their great current under representation under First Past the Post. Or it could be minority political groupings or independents who are currently cut out of remuneration by two sets to the largest grouping, giving the largest minority block all four seats in a ward, whereas STV would give two sets to the larges grouping, a seat to a slightly smaller grouping and one to an independent. STV does not just fairly represent the balance between formal political groupings, it is just as valuable in ensuring that every significant interest is fairly and proportionately represented on a council e.g. environmental or pro-development interests, youth or older adult participation, farmers and town dwellers.
5. STV is fair and roughly proportional and ensures that the end result and balance on the council fairly represents every significant interest and grouping rather than having the largest minority interest or grouping eliminating all others.
6. STV ensures that people can vote exactly in line with their personal preferences rather than agonizing over whether they need to vote tactically for or against the person or interest they actually prefer. Under STV there is no reason at all to vote tactically.
7. STV enables people not just to vote for or against, but to rank people in order of preference, thus giving them a more significant and powerful say in how their council is to be made up.
8. STV does not give representation or say to tiny minorities in determining representation. A group or interest needs much more support than it does to get into parliament under MMP. Under MMP quite legitimate and sizeable groups like that represented by ACT must still get 5% of the vote to get representation. Under STV in even the largest ward of seven members a group would need to get 8.5% to get in. The argument that a tiny, extreme group might determine the result of one seat by their preferences would happen very occasionally and transparently. Nowadays, under FPP the Nazis and Communists don't stand, but may determine some FPP elections by tactical voting we don't know about, so extremists are equally irrelevant to either electoral system.
9. STV will not reduce voter turnout. It is not lower in those parts of the world, like Australia and Ireland that use it than in comparable First Past the Post Systems.
10. STV is, for the voters, simple and familiar enough for them. I have found that most New Zealander have had plenty of experience through their massive participation in voluntary organizations, in exercising preferential voting. For the voter, preferential voting, especially for single vacancies, is essentially the same as STV and they would be able to use if effectively.
11. Because STV will be used for the District Health Boards next time, those territorial local authorities and regional councils that chose STV will actually reduce potential voter confusion to ensure that all voting in the 2004 package is by the same STV system in their districts.
12. Arguments that the computer system for counting the votes is complex are irrelevant to the voters. The complexity of the computer programme is to ensure fairness. Voters simply need to know that. They don't need to know the details of the computer programme for their payroll to be paid, or the TAB programme that calculates the odds - the colour of the money they recover is the same.
13. Inevitably, some candidates will be withdrawn, either during the voting process or during the counting process because they have been elected to a higher office. Under FPP, these votes are totally wasted and the consequences of candidate withdrawal, is more often than not, that a candidate with opposing viewpoint will be elected instead. Under STV all those votes will count and will assist the election of someone who those who supported the withdrawn candidate preferred to be elected to that position, which seems fairer and certainly more inclusive.
14. For candidates, their supporters and psephologists or election buffs, they will actually receive more information about how each candidate and grouping was supported by the voters than they do at present. They will get the first preference voters for each candidate as at present and just as early, but they will also be able to find out the order in which the person got elected and how many additional preferences they received at each stage of the process, together with information on which other candidates supporters of elected or eliminated candidates distributed their preferences for. As with any close election at present, the final result will take a few extra days, but it will proved a certain, clear and informed mandate for all those elected and a great diversity in participation and representativeness for the council they have elected.