Victoria, BC - Final US local election results, released yesterday,
show the clean sweep continues for STV in North America. Following BC's
58% vote to approve STV in 2005, four US jurisdictions approved a
change to an STV or similar voting system this week.

Minneapolis voted 65% in favor of adopting STV for all their
municipal elections, including their elected council, parks board,
library board, and estimate and taxation board.

The city of Davis, California voted 55% in favour of using STV to
elect its city council. This plebiscite comes two years after a
Governance Task Force recommended that the city adopt STV and in the
wake of several successful STV elections at the University of
California - Davis.

Both Oakland California (67%) and Pierce County (Tacoma) Washington
(53%) also passed measures to adopt Instant Runoff Voting measures,
which is a form of STV applied to single-seat races.

In all these elections, a 50% threshold was required to make the change.

"Wherever voters are given a choice between STV and
first-past-the-post, they choose STV because it provides better
representation, and more voter choice." Said Bruce Hallsor, President
of Fair Voting BC and co-chair of the Yes campaign in the 2005
referendum, in reaction to the US results. "Polls here in BC, and in
the United States, consistently show that the more voters learn about
STV, the more they like it. We are confident that in the next BC
referendum, in 2009, we will easily exceed the 60% majority required by
BC Law." Hallsor added. "We note, however, that the 60% threshold is
unprecedented, and was not required in any of the US jurisdictions that
considered this matter."