Single Transferable Vote and the Oscars: Viewer Satisfaction.

What would happen if the Academy Awards only nominated one genre of movies for the best picture or films from one studio.

Would it lose some of its audience? Would advertisers be less willing to sponsor it? Would fans of a variety of films be disappointed?

Those are all fair questions to ask, but luckily we don't have to ask them because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences early on decided to use a Single Transferable Vote to narrow down the nominees for the oscars in order to ensure each genre and each studio gets a fair share of Oscar nomination. It has been doing this every year since 1936.

With the Oscars, it is to the Academy's advantage to satisfy the most viewers (as well as producers) and as such maximize their audience and maximize their revenue. Because STV delivers proportional results, it has worked quite successfully over the years at showcasing a variety of films for each award.

Often if you talk to your friends around award time, you will find that each person has seen one or more of the movies and often different ones.

For the same reason, STV creates a government that satisfies the greatest number of voters. Most voters under a Single Transferable Vote will have supported a winning candidate, or at least has them as their second choice. This is important as there is often a huge level of alienation between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent.

Like the Oscar nominations, having a greater satisfaction with representation also will improve the political audience. In BC, the US, and the United Kingdom, voter turnout has been dropping, even with the excitement surround the US Presidential Race this year, overall voter turnout only increased by around 1%.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that most voters do not feel represented by their MLAS or they feel that they live in a riding where their vote does not count. That voter turnout is as high as it is, is probably due more to a sense of civic responsibility to vote than in a positive experience surrounding voting.

However, when you feel your vote can really make a difference, this will change. Voter falloff -- IE, people who stop voting will decrease. Since there will be less examples of habitually voting for a candidate who falls short, there will be a much greater motivation to get out and vote.

While it will still be a tough to get young voters out (an easier solution would be to lower the voting age), the election of a wider range of candidates should ensure that young voters in each district have a candidate as well as an MLA who young voters can relate to. As it stands now, there are very few politicians even elected who are under the age of 40. With a Single Transferable Vote it is much more likely that at least one of the candidates in each area (at least in four, five and six seat districts) could serve as a role model for youth.