Students go Green and like STV in their own vote
High school kids across province choose NDP in mock election


By Sylvie Paillard
Published May 20th 2005 in Whistler Question
The ballots are in and if it were up to B.C. students, the NDP would be our provincial leaders and the Single Transferable Vote would be our new electoral system.

The 58,000 B.C. students participating in Student Vote B.C. had their say Monday (May 16) and over 20,000 elected NDP candidates from 45 ridings compared to 16,000 voting for 25 Liberals.

The Green Party may have hope for the future in West Vancouver-Garibaldi, however. The party took the riding with 692 votes out of a total of 1,567. The Liberals came in a distant second with 417 votes and the NDP received 364. The victory went to the NDP at Howe Sound Secondary, but not as decisively as some students expected. While 300 participating students gave the NDP 137 votes, the Greens got 117, while the Liberals received 29 votes.

Don Ross Secondary students gave their support to the Greens with 135 votes out of 275. NDP came in second with 78 and the Liberals got 42.

Students also showed that they like the Single Transferable Vote system. Province-wide, 61.9 percent of the 35,000 voters, supported the system. In West Vancouver-Garibaldi, 61 percent, or 770 voters supported the system. At HSSS, 181 votes went in support of STV versus 108 opposed, and at Don Ross, 125 supported STV versus 122 opposed.

Student Vote BC is a non-partisan parallel election program aiming to build a habit of participation among students under the voting age.
IRV Soars in Twin Cities, FairVote Corrects the Pundits on Meaning of Election Night '09
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers.  Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections;  the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.

And as pundits try to make hay out of the national implications of Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections, Rob Richie in the Huffington Post concludes that the gubernatorial elections have little bearing on federal elections.

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