Stop the gerrymandering of ridings:
One of the big crutches of the No side is the notion that big ridings have a lot of pitfalls. Well, here is one big reason why they could be a good thing.
Anyone of the baby boomer generation will likely remember the story of “Gracies Finger”.
In 1982, McCarthy was suspected of interfering in the re-drawing of the electoral boundaries of her Little Mountain constituency, to include an appendage of a wealthy westside Vancouver area, thus helping ensure her electoral success. This appendage and subsequent scandal became known as ‘Gracie’s Finger’. The actual area in question was between 16th and 33rd Avenues in Vancouver around the Arbutus Street corridor.[1]
This sort of advantageous redrawing happens all the time in Provincial and Federal areas. It’s possible because the ridings, especially in urban areas, are very small and precise.
Under BC-STV the ridings are more “regional”, Vancouver West, or Victoria South. So while there is certainly an ability to do the same sort of fiddling… it is without a doubt more difficult to greatly affect the fortunes of MLAs in a riding that includes so many more people, and areas.
And before someone says “but we’ll lose local representation”, remember, in a 4 MLA riding like ours on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast, it would be very difficult for a party to elect only urban candidates as the swing votes would all be in the rural areas. If a candidate is seen to be urban-only, then the rural folks can band together and ensure that they vote for someone who represents them… 2nd choice votes would be the key in BC-STV, sow without the presumably 2nd choices of rural candidates, it would be very difficult for all 4 candidates to be elected exclusively from urban voters.
Not only would it be difficult for all MLAs to come from the largest centre, it would be numerically impossible. 80% plus voters will elect an MLA of their choice. There is no district where 80% of the voters live in one centre with the remaining 20% in another.