The process used to elect Edmonton city councillors is straightforward. Each (participating) voter casts one vote. The votes are counted in each ward and the leader is declared elected.
The official report of the election says exactly this and no more.
The candidates' names and the accompanying vote totals are listed, with the one with the most votes indicated as being elected.
Very straightforward and simple.
The official report does not state the number of eligible voters or the percentage of turn-out.
The official report makes no bones of presenting the percentage of the vote received or even the total number of votes cast, from which the vote percentages could be derived. These have no role in a plurality election.
However those facts do play a role in assuring voters that their votes were not wasted, that the winner was due the right to be elected.
In fact as my blog "Change Edmonton Elections today!" pointed out, the 2017 Edmonton election had great wastage and many councillors were elected with only minority support in their wards:
"In the last election, seven councillors (out of 12 in total) were elected with only a minority of the votes in their wards. In most of these wards a combination of only two other candidates' votes, if it have been made possible and if voters had voted that way, would have overwhelmed the leaders' lead, and in those cases if they happened they would have seen someone with more general support be elected to represent the ward residents on council.
In more than half the wards councillors were elected by an average of only 36 percent of the voters in their ward. Thus almost two-thirds of the votes in more than half the wards were totally wasted. In the other five wards an average of 58 percent of the votes elected the five councillors, thus seeing the waste of more than a third of the votes in those wards.
This waste of votes over all the 12 wards amounted to 105,000 votes while the successful candidates altogether received only 86,000 votes.
As well Edmonton municipal elections suffer from low turn-outs. The 2017 city election saw only 200,000 vote out of 600,000 eligible voters, a turn-out of only 33 percent.
In one ward, only 16,000 votes were cast. This is an amazingly low number when the ward is said to cover one-twelfth of the city. If 7 wards were that size, seven candidates could take a majority of seats on council with only 60,000 votes, a majority in each of the 7 wards. 60,000 voters could thus control a city hall governing a city with almost 1 million residents.
The minority representation in seven wards and low turn-out by ward are all facts that could have been brought out with a more comprehensive election report.
If I had to give the official report a mark, I would have to give it an "INCOMPLETE".
The results seem to be honestly reported, although not in a revealing way. (There is apparently no citizen oversight or hand-count verification of the results reported by the computer election technology used in city elections.)
Thanks for reading.
Check out my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.
This year:
*Alberta is celebrating 150 years in Confederation 1870-2020
*100th Anniversary of STV first being used to elect legislators in Canada
Winnipeg MLAs first elected through STV in 1920
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