On the heels of recent votes by several US cities to adopt STV-type
voting systems, the Australian state of Victoria has held its first STV
election this past weekend. Victoria is the last of Australia's five
bicameral state legislatures to adopt proportional representation to
elect at least one of its houses. The method aopted there was very
similar to the Single Transferable Voting system that the BC Citizens'
Assembly recommended for BC and which won 58% support in the 2005
referendum.

"The state of Victoria is similar to BC in many ways," says Bruce
Hallsor, president of Fair Voting BC. "Its population is approximately
5 million, with a heavy urban concentration in a single southern city
(Melbourne), so the lessons from Victoria's first experience with STV
may provide insight into how well STV will work for BC." He added

"The STV election went off without a hitch, and delivered the
results that proponents expect" Hallsor reported. "The major parties
all earned seats in rough proportion to their popular vote, while
smaller parties have a chance to get representation in the upper house
for the first time". "Importantly, representatives from the two major
parties, Labour and Liberal, were elected in every region of the state
- no area is without representation in both government and opposition."
Hallsor concluded.

In contrast, the single-member (alternative voting) results in the
lower house were highly distorted - the first place party won half
again as many seats as they deserved based on their share of the
popular vote and some smaller parties were shut out altogether.
Furthermore, the single-member election produced significant regional
divisions - the new government has little rural representation and the
opposition has little urban representation.

"What's most striking about Victoria adopting STV is how little fuss
there was. The Australian public accepts STV as a normal and reasonable
way to elect their representatives," said Bruce Hallsor. "STV is a
modern voting system for modern times that's being adopted throughout
the English-speaking world. Next year, Scotland will join Ireland,
Northern Ireland and Australia, as well as various cities in New
Zealand and the US in using this fair and effective voting system that
maintains a strong link between voter and representative in every
region."