Edmonton's new city council is well balanced. Eight women and four men were elected. Both people of colour and whites were elected. But the results were not arrived at in the most democratic way. The council was not elected by a majority of the votes, although we know there are systems that could do that.
Our new mayor was elected with less than half the votes cast. And most of the people that make up our new city council were not elected by a majority of votes in their wards. These are harsh truths that counter the celebration that the city recently enjoyed.
Results like that make it more difficult to defend our democracy from the threats it faces. What a different matter it would be to be able to say that the new city council was the choice of most voters and to be able to say that our new council truly deserved the great responsibility we are giving it.
The new city council may do well. Let's hope it does. But if we don't change our voting system to a more scientific system, we may not be lucky next time.
The election of mayor Amarjeet Sohi is described in the media as a decisive victory. But more voters voted for the other candidates (altogether) than for him. Would he have been elected if the will of a majority was required to be elected? Yes probably. But it was not proven.
The same holds true for the winners in nine of the city's 12 wards. They each received less than half the votes in their wards. Two were elected although receiving fewer than 27 percent of the votes. Only 8700 voters in those two wards saw their choice elected while 33,000 voters in the two wards were not that lucky.
Over all the 12 wards, 99,000 voters saw their choice elected while 112,000 voters were not that lucky.
While the council is balanced overall, can the 13,000 ignored voters in Anirniq count on a member elected in a different ward to represent their interests? Possibly.
But if so, why have wards? Having wards might be meant to ensure local representation. But if wards are a full one-twelfth of the city, which they are, can they provide what people mean when they say local representation? This is especially true when the majority of voters in most of the wards are ignored in the election.
What the 12 wards do is divide up the city's voters into 12 separate groupings where only one person is elected.
A person with relatively few votes may be elected in one district, while in other districts candidates with many votes are not elected. Anne Stevenson with just 4000 votes was elected. But John Dziadyk (with 5400 votes), Caroline Mathews (5400 votes), Giselle General (5200 votes), Rhiannon Hoyle (5800 votes) and Tom Shaw (5700 votes) were not.
Having 12 wards means that some voters cannot vote for the candidate they prefer. Some cannot even vote for their neighbours if they wanted to.
People can run as candidates in whatever ward they want. They don't have to run in the ward where they live. But voters are forced to vote only in the ward where they live.
The combination of having 12 wards and electing only one councillor in each ward means that most of the votes are ignored. Most of the voters do not see their choice elected.
Edmonton city elections were not always like this. Prior to 1964, the city was not divided into wards. The voters could vote for any candidate in the running. And the most popular candidates across the city were the ones elected. They might have been elected through voters mostly in one area or they might have support spread across the city.
In 1960, candidates of two different parties were elected. And citizens of the city could turn to anyone on council for advice and help. They were not divided by ward divisions.
If we go back farther, to the 1920s, we see Edmonton using a form of proportional representation. Proportional representation is used in most European countries today. Sweden, Switzerland and Norway use PR and are well respected. In PR elections, seats are filled scientifically. The candidates with the most votes are elected, and most voters see their votes used to elect someone.
In Edmonton's PR, there were no wards and several seats on council were filled at one time. Each voter could cast just one vote, so no one group could take all the seats. The result was fair with each party receiving a number of seats that was roughly in line with its vote count.
To re-create this form of PR today, we could abolish the wards or just have two, electing several councillors in each. With each voter casting just one vote, the result would be guaranteed to be fair, with a large proportion of the votes used to elect someone.
That was how it was in Edmonton in the 1920s when the city used Single Transferable Voting. This is a system where voters vote for individual candidates, not for parties; where the most popular candidates are elected; where about 80 percent or more of the voters elect someone that they prefer.
Another way for Edmonton voters to have more political power would be by increasing the number of councillors the city has. Twelve councillors is a small number for a city the size of Edmonton. Many cities have more than that. Calgary has 14 councillors. Ottawa is about the same size as Edmonton and has 23 councillors.
If Edmonton had adopted these changes before the 2021 election, the result might have been the same or it might have been different. But the result would have been arrived at more scientifically. Most of the voters would have seen their vote used to elect someone.
In the 2021 election, just a little more than a third of the eligible voters voted. And most of the votes cast were ignored. Sohi received just 100,000 votes, to win the mayor's seat. More than five times that number did not vote at all or voted for someone else.
A majority of seats on council - seven city councillors - was elected with a combined total of just 43,000 votes. This is a mere seven percent of the eligible voters in the city.
I certainly hope the city council that was elected will serve the city well. We all hope so.
If we are lucky, it may work out that way. But using a more scientific voting system would mean that we wouldn't need to depend on luck.
If we want a larger number of voters to get out and vote, we should reward those who do vote by using most of the votes they cast to elect our representatives. Right now most voters are ignored. And the candidates elected may have many votes or only a relative few. They may have a majority of the votes cast in the ward or barely more than a quarter of them.
A more certain voting system like STV would encourage more voters to participate and would mean that the elected council would be certain to be the choice of most of the voters. It would be better all around.
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The media also misses the reality of the recent Edmonton city election.
One article saw the result as city voters voting against the status quo.
What really happened is that the group that through sheer random-ness happened to take seats did not include many incumbents running for re-election.
These incumbents ran for re-election:
Knack re-elected 12,000 votes
Esslinger not re-elected 4,400
Dziadyk not re-elected 5400
Paquette re-elected 8200
Caterina not re-elected 1500
Hamilton re-elected 10,000
Cartmell re-elected 16,000
Banga not re-elected 4000
total: 61,500 votes for incumbents
average 7900 votes per incumbent candidate
Six of the successful non-incumbents were elected with a lower vote count than that.
so the problem was one of distribution of the pro-incumbent vote.
If the incumbents were a party, the large number of votes that went to Knack and Cartmell were not used to aid the other incumbents to be re-elected.
As it was,the incumbents had nothing in common except being incumbents. Incumbent Paquette is NDP and incumbents Cartmell and Dziadyck were endorsed by Nickel, a Trump-style former city councillor running for mayor.
So to speak of voter's support for the status quo as proven by whether or not incumbents were re-elected is not logical.
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2021 Edmonton city election
Early results
Eight woman, four men elected
Four non-whites (Including Metis man Aaron Paquette), eight whites elected
Mayor
Amarjeet Sohi (newly-elected)
Nakota Isga (Ward 1)
Andrew Knack
Anirniq (Ward 2 Erin Rutherford woman (newly-elected)
tastawiyiniwak (Ward 3) Karen Principe woman (newly-elected)
Dene (Ward 4) Aaron Paquette Metis O'Day'min (Ward 5 Anne Stevenson woman (newly-elected)
Métis (Ward 6 Ashley Salvador woman (newly-elected)
sipiwiyiniwak (Ward 7 Sarah Hamilton woman (newly-elected)
papastew (Ward 8) Michael Janz (newly-elected)
pihêsiwin (Ward 9 Tim Cartmell
Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi (Ward 10) (see footnote) Jennifer Rice woman (newly-elected)
(with Keren Tang, the first non-white woman to st on council) Karhiio (Ward 11 Keren Tang woman (newly-elected)
(with Jennifer Rice, the first non-white woman to st on council)
Sspomitapi (Ward 12) Jo-Anne Wright woman (newly-elected) ===================== Outgoing people-oriented Don Iveson endorsed Ashley Salvador, Ahmed Knowmadic Ali and Anne Stevenson for council - two of them were elected NDP (Sarah Hoffman) endorsed Michael Janz running in Ward papastew, Glynnis Lieb in Ward Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi, and Ward Anirniq candidate Erin Rutherford - two elected from https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/alberta-ndp-connected-group-sought-to-influence-edmontons-municipal-election-by-limiting-number-of-progressive-candidates Kirsten Goa (Ward papastew) and Ashley Stevenson were also contacted by the organizing committee -- Stevenson elected
Rightist mayoral candidate Mike Nickel endorsed
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Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi
EE-PEE-KOH-KAH-NAY-PEE-OAT-SEE Meaning: Traditional lands where the Blackfoot Nation performed Buffalo Rounds. It is known that bison would migrate up to 300 kilometres north of the North Saskatchewan River to the safety of artesian wells to gather for the winter
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