u/Fun_Yak3615

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdmNrU-xQxg

Interesting video on where our council tax goes and why it feels like nothing is improving.

Have the Greens got any plans to update council tax / replace it? Have they got any plans to fund local social care nationally like the NHS and not force councils into a losing game of legally being required to provide it but financially unable to do so without cutting other funding?

Do the Greens have plans for investment so that councils can buy back child safeguarding accommodation so they don't allow private investors to get a 20% profit off this unavoidable expense?

We still need to undo a lot of what Thatcher did. I swear every major issue in this country can find its roots in the 80s.

I think it's fair to say that almost all Green members wish we could switch to a PR system and to break the 2-party system that causes so many issues.

I've heard a lot of advocacy for STV and it is a legitimate reform idea that has established precedent, but I would like to promote STAR instead and the PR version STAR-PR and discuss its benefits that solve certain problems more cleanly than STV.

First, I'll explain how it works (and provide links to other explanations)

STAR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKg0fRL88zc

1. Each voter gets a ballot where they can score each candidate from 0 to 5. (no score means a vote of 0 for candidate)
2. The top 2 scoring candidates overall get to R2
3. R2 is an automatic runoff using all ballots. Each ballot counts for whichever finalist scored higher.

STAR-PR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVtrGkuSBfY

1. Each voter gets a ballot where they can score each candidate from 0 to 5. (a blank score counts as 0)
2. A quota is set using: total voters / total winners :
3. 20 voters / 4 winners = 5
4. The top scoring candidate wins the first seat
5. Ballots are sorted by the score they gave that winner: 5, then 4, 3>2>1>0
6. One quota of support is allocated to that winner, starting with the voters who scored them highest. If the quota is reached partway through a score group, that group is only fractionally spent. Example: if the quota is 5, and 4 voters scored the winner 5 while 3 voters scored them 4, then the 4 top-score ballots are fully spent, and only 1 voter-equivalent is needed from the 3 voters who gave a 4. Therefore, each of those 3 ballots keeps 2/3 of its weight for later rounds.
7. Repeat until all seats are filled.

Benefits:

1. Adoption of STAR-PR would pair naturally with adopting STAR as well and thereby eliminate FPTP entirely from the process. As you can see from Scotland and Wales, it's quite easy to end up with PR and still have with FPTP. I have a feeling resistance to PR will end up meaning FPTP will stay in place for MPs even if it does get pushed through so you still have plenty of disenfranchised voters knowing their vote does nothing.
2. STAR compared to IRV / Preference Voting (so this is for single candidates) has higher ballot expressiveness, stronger resistance to centre-squeeze (the compromise candidate gets knocked out too soon), better monotonicity (more support doesn't hurt you), reduced "favourite betrayal pressure"(less reason to abandon their favourite candidate strategically), and more forgiving of honest voting.
3. STAR-PR compared to STV also has higher expressiveness and is simpler to tabulate, easier to audit, and has less ballot exhaustion.