Do you think a system is fair if it allows a minority of the voters to elect a politician who will then lord it over all the voters? Do you think such a system is democratic?
If you say no, you are not alone.
We do not elect the leaders of our major political parties through such a bizarre system. Singh and Kenny, O'Toole and Trudeau were elected under a system where the successful candidate has to have the support of a majority of the party voters.
This system is called Alternative Voting (or Instant Run-off Voting, if you prefer).
Preferential voting is used where each voter marks a first preference and back-up preferences. This prevents voters from being wasted even if placed with the least- popular candidates.
The whole process ensures majority rule. Why is that important? Cause anything else ain't democratic, as I'm sure someone somewhere said once.
Alternative Voting has been used for election of the leaders of our major political parties for many years.
When Alberta Conservative leader Kenny is accused of using a third candidate - a so-called suicide candidate - to help seal up his victory as leader of the Alberta UCP, he is at no time accused of using the candidate to split the anti-Kenny vote. Why? Because under AV, there is no vote-splitting - if you and your friends have a majority, you have a majority. It may take a couple vote transfers to accumulate the vote behind one single candidate but it will eventually win, and there is nothing the other side - the minority - can do about it.
There is also no strategic voting - those despicable instances where a voter does not vote for whom he or she wants but instead votes for a different person he or she can stand - in order to prevent the vote being wasted.
Votes are seldom wasted under Alternative Voting. If cast for a less-popular candidate, instead of being thrown in the wastebasket as under FPTP, they are transferred until finding a home with a winner or until other voters secure majority victory for someone else.
Long used for fairness to elect party leaders, Alternative Voting has not been adopted for elections of representatives of the general public until now. But this is changing. London, Ontario used Alternative Voting for its city election in 2018, and voters in two other Ontario cities voted in favour of its adoption as well.
Would Edmonton voters vote for such a change?
If a referendum were scheduled, there would be a public education campaign that would make voters more aware of the weaknesses of our present FPTP system and the benefits of majority rule Alternative Voting. They would learn for example that five of our city councillors were elected with only the support of a minority of the votes in their wards. That almost half the votes cast in the city election went into the wastebasket. Knowing this, I doubt if they would vote for the present system's retention.
It may not take long before a fair system - Alternative Voting - is used in cities across the land to elect representatives that are supported by a majority of the voters. Let's hope it happens soon.
Thanks for reading.
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