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Tom Monto

Vancouver election 2018 - Block Voting befogs and misleads

Block Voting sometimes elected mixed representation; sometimes it does not,.

But even when it does, is it proportional?


We can look at the last Vancouver city election and see four parties electing one or more councillors

or we can look at the 1921 Edmonton provincial election -- all seats taken by one party under Block Voting.


Block Voting means multiple voting, and that means we can't know exactly how many voters support parties who run more than one candidate.


Block Voting in Vancouver in 2018

with ten seats on council up for election, each voter can cast ten votes.


Results in Vancouver in 2018 shows us that

- voters did not give their ten votes for any one slate.

Some might cast ten votes but split their vote;

others do not use all their ten votes;

some perhaps do not cast all their vorts and split the votes they do cast over variety of slates.


all the voters who voted for any successful candidate did not give a vote to each of the other candidates of the same party.

(if they had, all candidates of the Green slate would have been elected, and all seven NPA candidates would have taken the other seven seats.)

But instead each party who elected at least one councillor had unsuccessful candidates.

that is not how voting should work under Block Voting. it means that it is difficult (or impossible) to measure party proportionality.


in fact the party percentages listed on Wiki Vancouver 2018 election do not actually show party support.

here's what it says for parties who elected city councillors:

NPA 25 percent of vote

Green 16 percent of the vote

COPE 9 percent of the vote

OneCity 6 percent of the vote.

But this seems to be based on idea that election was one person one vote.


actually 175,000 voters cast 1.5M votes.


And actually

NPA most popular candidate had support of 53,000 voters least candidate had support of 35,000 voters Green most popular candidate had support of 70,000 voters

least candidate had support of 41,000 voters COPE most popular candidate had support of 49,000 voters

least candidate had support of 37,000 voters OneCity most popular candidate had support of 45,000 voters

least candidate had support of 36,000 votes the least-popular successful candidate took about 43,000 votes. any who took more than that number of votes was elected any candidate with fewer was not elected. (party totals had nothing to do with this.) Even if voters cast only the votes that would go to their favoured slate, if one candidate had enough votes to win, then all on that slate should also be elected. so obviously voters plump by not voting for all the candidates on a slate or do cast their ten votes but split their vote over variety of slates. Perhaps they restrict their voting thinking rightly as it happens that a vote given to candidate B on slate X would be used against the election of candidate A on slate X. Once voters break from slate voting, many more do as well -- people do not trust a vote cast for a lesser-preferred candidate not to be used against their most favoured candidate. such would not be the case where voter cast along party lines fully and completely. totalling the votes cast for successful candidates, we see about 55 percent of voters cast went to successful candidates. 45 percent were ignored. (under STV or MMP, about 80 percent or more are actually used to elect someone.) with 45 percent wasted, was result actually proportional? of votes cast for parties who elected at least one, some of the votes cast for each of those parties were wasted. say COPE successful COPE candidate received 49,000 votes, party received 135,000 votes. we can't know if all the wasted votes were other votes cast by the 49,000 or were they cast by other voters. Was the result proportional? How can we know when we don't know how many voters cast at least one vote for any (one or more) NPA candidate, Green candidate, COPE or Onecity? For NPA was it 53,000 or 175,000 (all the voters)? For Green was it 70,000 or 175,000 (all the voters)? for COPE was it 49,000 or 135,000? For Onecity was it 45,000 or 90,000? We can't know from the vote tallies as given. It could be one or the other or something in between. That is the befogging result of multiple voting. looking at parties with no rep: Vision was it 41,000 of the voters or 138,000? Vancouver First was it 22,00 or 80,000? Yes Vancouver was it 14,000 or 65,000? and so on We can't know from the results as given. It could be one or the other or something in between. That is more of the befogging result of multiple voting. did these parties actually deserve to have no rep - we can't know. definitely elected rep was mixed - more than one party had rep. there was no one-party sweep in part this was due to no party running a full slate of ten candidates. This is despite fact that under BV, you don't have to worry about vote splitting. vote spitting is not a obstacle to be elected under Block voting - you could run ten candidate and each of your supporters could give each of your candidates one vote and if you are the largest group you would take all the seats electing everyone on the slate (Liberal party did that in Edmonton in 1921 and Liberal supporters did not vote full slate. even the less popular ones on the slate had enough to be elected.) only if a slate was larger than the number of votes that each voter could cast would vote spitting become an issue. not the case here at all at all. if voters are plumping and also parties are running partial slates, you see a restriction on the range offered voters - thus dulling one of the positive aspects of using MM district. the elected rep. was mixed but were the ten elected the right ones? did they belong to the parties who had the support of the most voters? we can't know, as strange as that sounds.

and proportionality is measured by party totals - how many voters support that party - but that is exactly what we can't know from vote tallies under Block voting. and And CV cause it uses multiple voting also suffers from that problem.

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