So STV lost. It’s amusing to compare its share of the popular vote to the number of ridings it carried — Apparently it fell victim to the problem it was trying to correct.

There were a couple of big complaints about STV, valid or not:

1) It’s too complicated to vote for more than one candidate.
2) A 12-step vote counting algorithm is insane.
3) Ridings should be geographically reasonable.
4) Ridings should be represented by one (apparently resident) MLA.
5) Shrapnel parliaments are bad parliaments.

I think the STV system proposed tried to accomplish too much. It broke the 45th law of power:

Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once

Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Changing the ridings, changing the number of candidates per riding, changing the method of voting, and changing the method of vote counting, all at once, was evidently too much.

As at this writing, the parties received these proportions of the popular vote, and seats:

Liberals: 45.75%, 50 seats.
NDP: 42.11%, 35 seats.
Green: 8.17%, 0 seats.
Conservatives: 2.17%, 0 seats.
Other: 1.80%, 0 seats.

Proponents of proportional representation systems claim the following seat distribution is more fair (85 seats * popular vote %, approximate):

Liberals: 39 seats.
NDP: 36 seats.
Green: 7 seats.
Conservatives: 2 seats.
Other: 1 seat.

So: An 11 seat loss for the majority party, distributed across the remaining parties. Presumably actual results would be different because of different electoral tactics, but it’s fun to look at the simple “what if”.

In the BC Legislative Assembly 43 seats form a majority. Under my “simple proportional representation” results above no party holds enough seats. In fact, the Green Party holds the balance of power. If they ally with the NDP then the NDP forms government. If they ally with the Liberals, the Liberals do — We’d have a shrapnel parliament with a small party holding the balance of power.

Okay, all that setup aside, here’s something that might work politically:

1) Call the measure FPPP: First past the post plus. The system is an incremental improvement, not a complete reworking.
2) Leave everything else the exact same (ballots, ridings, etc).
3) Create a provincial senate or double the current seats in the legislative assembly (plus one).
4) Assign the new seats to parties based on the highest percent of the vote each party achieved in a riding. For example, in my results above, declare that the Conservatives carried the two ridings in which they achieved the highest popular vote among all of the ridings in which they received any popular vote. Do this assignment top-down, so in close ridings both candidates win.

I’m sure there’s already a name for this system, but it seems less vulnerable to FUD than STV. It’s mostly open to attack in that it doubles (plus one) the cost of the legislature, and seems to require picking candidates from a party list for the winning party (analogously to the pigeonhole principle — they won’t lose in enough ridings to fill their senate seats), which will probably give people conniptions.

If you add the PR numbers and the FPP numbers above and compare to the new majority point in my first past the post plus parliament (the FPPPP) — 86 seats — you’ll see the Liberals form a majority, but if the other parties work together with a few defectors its not impossible for them to pass legislation. We’ve combined the best of the Spider King parliament (minority votes actually matter) with the best of the Sun King parliament (minority votes don’t get in the way of progress).

All, hopefully, without confusing the old people.

Thoughts?