Will this result in a fractured coalition government that is incapable of making a decison quickly?

From what I’ve read (since I’ve never lived or visited), I understand that India has exactly this problem. While their situation may not be caused by STV as I’m suggestion in this question, I wonder if this is a possible outcome.

Post your responses to these questions, pose other questions or concerns and let’s have a conversation about this.  The shape of our democracy deserves our attention.

For more questions and discussion on this topic: Click Here

Can the system be gamed?  In Question 2, I asked if this will just concentrate the votes for a single party.  Here, I’m asking if voters will vote for a weak choice as their second option and thus skew the results.

For example, will a voter who is a staunch NDP supporter select what might be an easier opposition party to deal with in the legislature (such as an independent candidate)?

Will this just concentrate the votes and result in more disproportional representation and have exactly the opposite of the desired effect?

Is it reasonable to assume that people will actually rank all of the candidates,or knowing that 3 MLA’s will be elected, will they just rank the four from the party that they would like to see in power.

I have a tough time believing that even a mildly enthusiastic NDP supporter would put a Liberal in any position among the top 3, or vice versa. (See the next question to look at the possibility of using this to game the system)

So here’s the question: Does this lead to a danger of having one area in the region that votes heavily for one party overwhelming the other regions?

Here’s a model of what I’m concerned about.  Because of the simplicity of this model, I’m nearly certain that the results would be different in real life.  That’s the point of this post, I’m looking for the truth, so feel free to comment and enlighten me.

I’ve assumed here that if people just vote among party lines and rank only the top 3 candidates.  Take a look at Try BC-STV and you’ll see how this could happen fairly easily, particularly if people aren’t completely sure how the new voting system works.

What if this happens

Post your responses to these questions, pose other questions or concerns and let’s have a conversation about this.  The shape of our democracy deserves our attention.

For more questions and discussion on this topic: Click Here

Given the goal of more proportional representation in our provincial legislative body, has the implementation of STV been shown in other jurisdictions to have provided that?  For example has the representation in legislature in terms of seats lined up with the popular vote?

On the other side of the coin, have any jurisdictions who’ve put this into place repealed it after using it?

Post your responses to these questions, pose other questions or concerns and let’s have a conversation about this.  The shape of our democracy deserves our attention.

For more questions and discussion on this topic: Click Here

If you’ve had the chance to listen to my show, you’ll note that we don’t’ cover politics regularly.  It isn’t that I don’t like politics, but rather that I don’t feel I have enough background in the area of public policy to ask effective questions on my toes.  So I stick with what I know, business, marketing, technology, relationships, etc.

Note: If you haven’t listened to my show, I hope you’ll take a few minutes and explore my website to see if there’s something that interests you.  I’ve learned a TON in the last year from it and listeners tell me that they have too.

But I have a problem as a voter during this provincial election.

I’m looking at the STV (the single transferable vote) that’s being proposed here in British Columbia.  And I have some questions.

But first, a little background on the STV as I understand it (and the issues behind it).

The goal of a new voting system is to improve the relationship between what the public votes for and the results that they get in a legislative body. (If I’ve gotten this or anything else wrong here, feel free to correct me by leaving a comment).

The proponents of the STV say that the system will prevent voter disenfranchisement and create more proportional results in our legislature.

Critics say that it is confusing and overcomplicated and won’t result in more proportional representation.

I’ve researched it using the following websites, which unfortunately is more than what I believe most voters will do.  That is not a proclamation of superiority, but rather an admission that this is more research than I did on the subject before I voted on it in the last referendum on the issue.

BC-STV Electoral Reform

No STV

This website shows what the current election would look like under a BC-STV system: Try BC-STV

After my research, I feel confident that I can explain the concept, but I have some nagging doubts that I need some answers to.

I’ve broken up all of the questions into separate posts – click here to see them.

Avast ye!

I don’t endorse taking prisoners, theft, killing, pillaging, looting, wearing a parrot as an accessory or piracy in any form, but I must admit that I’m a little awestruck by the sheer boldness of modern day pirates.  And I think there are some lessons that we can learn.

Hit them where they’re weak

The pirates don’t use another large boat to take down a tanker.  No, they use small fast little boats.  When your giant competitor tries to steal your customers, think like a pirate.  Get in your little speedboat and flank them.  Siphon off their customers from areas of their business that they can’t pay adequate atttention to.  Wal-Mart is defenseless against the custom tailor or the company that comes to you to change the tires on your car.

The power of a dozen pirates

In September 2008 twelve pirates armed with automatic guns and RPGs in a small high speed craft attacked, boarded and hijacked a  ship along with 25 crewmembers.  After stealing the crew’s cash and personal belongings, they requested a ransom from Egyptian intelligence officials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_attacked_by_Somali_pirates

Hold on.  There were 12 of them and they took on 25 crew members. Living in a port city, I’ve seen a few sailors.  They look like they can take care of themselves. So how did the pirates get the upper hand?  They showed up with the right tools (automatic guns and RPG’s) and I’ll bet that they were empowered (for those of you playing buzzword bingo – that’s 5 points) to make decisions on the spot about non-compliant hostages.

So, take this back to your company.  Ultra-Huge Competitor has miles of red tape to go through. In fact, they likely have some employees who need to ask for permission to go to the bathroom.  Not you, Nimble Fast-Reacting Company.  Your employees can make things right for customers.  On the spot. No manager approval required.  Because that’s what it takes to beat the big company.

Nothing is worse than a small company who wants to be big but does it in all the wrong ways.  They confuse standards and scalability with policies and inflexibility.

Try this.  Walk into a large big-box retailer and ask them if they can special order a certain German toy that you saw in last month’s Popular Mechanics.  Now try the same trick with your local Hobby shop.  If you get two no’s, it’s a good bet that the hobby shop’s space will be coming available fairly shortly.

Make a big bet

Most attempts at piracy fail.  Crews have gotten wise to this.  They use water cannons to repel the pirates.  Or they string barbed wire around the hull.  Some even have air support.

But when it pays off, the payoff is big.  One reported ransom was $15,000,000 US.

Back to you. If your idea pays off…if you beat the odds and your company survives…will you end up just eaking out a living?  Or will you end up being bought by a large competitor for an obscene amount of money because quite frankly, you’re just too much of a pain in the backside to have rattling around in the industry.

Safe harbour

Sometimes, you’ll take the risk and it won’t pay off.  What will you do?

Well, the pirates go back to their harbor towns where they live life quite well.  Even if there are some misgivings about the number of heavily armed men walking the streets, the citizens recognize the economic impact that they have.

So, do you have a backup plan?  I’ve encouraged my kids to go out and learn a trade right out of high school.  My son, in fact, is working on becoming a lifeguard.  He’ll always have that and if things went sour in his business, he can fall back on it to provide a bit of a bridge until something else comes up.

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen!

While you may have mixed feelings about the use of a religious holiday to promote your business, if you’re going to do it – you might as well do it right.

A local grocery store, which is part of a chain, has Easter down  pat.

In addition to the obligatory coloring page for kids contest, they run another promotion which, while simple, yields some brilliant results.

For the last two weeks, cashiers have been promoting their Saturday morning Easter hunt.  It ran today from 10 am until 3 pm.  When children arrived at the store, they were issued an Easter passport which required stamps to be collected from every department in the store.  Upon completion, each child  received a bag of Easter treats.

The execution of the promotion was simple and required only 1 – 1.5 additional staff since the stamp stations were set up to be completely self serve.  They were clearly marked by a bunch of helium-filled balloons that were easily spotted by my test subjects of 5 and 9 years old.

What made this promotion so brilliant were the benefits that the store gained from it.

Association: Creating the association of good feelings with a well branded grocery store could be incredibly powerful for years to come, especially when those feelings are reinforced with a Kinder Surprise.

Competitive Elimination: Because my children knew about the promotion, it made it onto the family schedule.  There was little chance of going to another store today.

Revenue Management: In Canada, Good Friday is a statutory holiday which requires most employees to be paid at least 1.5 times their regular rate.  Since we had to make a trip on Saturday morning anyway, we postponed our Friday trip to the grocery store. If there were enough other people like me, that would have a significant impact on labor costs for the day.

Employee Morale: Easter Sunday is traditionally spent with family.  While there will certainly be a number of shoppers that will make a last minute trip to the store before Easter dinner, perhaps some of the shoppers will have used their Saturday shopping trip to pick up everything they need.  Ideally, this will require less employees to work on Easter Sunday.

Revenue Enhancement: Every department, including the bakery, pharmacy, deli, dairy, customer service, magazines, meat department, produce, natural foods and the bulk section were included in our trip.  All  all of them had stations with Easter passport stamps.    Because of this, several items which were not on my list, but were needed (such as Kleenex for a house full of colds) made it into my cart.  The result: I probably spent about 25% more than planned.

So, what did you do for your clients and customers this Easter?