An extract from the City of Vancouver website:
"Voting in an election is one of the most important things a citizen can do in their community and country. Voting:
Strengthens our democracy
Gives each and every voter a voice in their local government
Makes us a much stronger community."
However voting only does this if the electoral system is structured to provide these results.
Currently, the electoral system used in Vancouver's city elections does not produce a strong democracy nor does it give each voter a voice in their local government.
In particular, almost half the votes that are cast are not used to elect anyone, all the elected councillors did not have support of a majority of voters, and most eligible voters do not turn up to vote - or at least did not turn up to vote in each of the last two elections. As well, the system used to elect Vancouver city councillors involves the counting of more than a million more votes than is necessary.
From the 2018 municipal election review:
"Although overall voter turnout did not increase this election compared to 2014 (43% in 2014 compared to 39% in 2018), voter turnout remained above the historic average turnout of 36% in Vancouver and was higher than other large Metro Vancouver municipalities (Surrey, Burnaby and Richmond). The investments made in initiatives this election led to an increase in voter engagement and laid the foundation for increased participation in future elections."
These investments included several new procedures brought in for the first time in the 2018 election, but the inspiration of these optimistic predictions is unknown.
Changes included moving the date of the election, limit on campaign contributions, and randomizing the order of candidates' names on the ballots.
In 2014, amendments to the Vancouver Charter changed the date of municipal elections to the 3rd Saturday of October in the year of the election instead of the 3rd Saturday in November.
In the fall of 2017, the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act was amended to limit campaign contributions for candidates so that candidates are no longer able to accept campaign donations from organizations, unions or corporations. A cap of $1,200 per individual donor was also put in place.
In June 2018, in an effort to improve fairness on the ballot, Council amended the Election Bylaw requiring candidate names to be listed on the ballot in randomized order. In September 2018, after the close of nomination period, candidate names were randomly drawn and based on the order of drawings, were listed in that order on the ballot.
As well, in 2014, the City introduced vote anywhere, which allowed voters to vote at any City of Vancouver voting place, and improved convenience and accessibility for voters. Prior to 2014, Vancouver voters were assigned to a voting division and were required to vote at a designated voting place on Election Day. While there were over 130 voting places open on Election Day, voters had no choice in where to vote – they could only cast their vote at their assigned location. Anywhere from 2,000 - 4,000 voters were assigned to each voting place depending on the anticipated voter turnout. This system existed to prevent voter fraud as paper voters’ lists were used at the voting place. Voter turnout at voting places historically ranged from 400 to about 1,500 voters. With increasing voter convenience and access in mind, staff sought to move towards a more citizen-centric model for managing the voting process. Beginning in 2011, many municipalities began using a “Vote Anywhere” model. Under this model, eligible voters can vote at any voting location set up in the municipality due to the use of real-time electronic voters’ list strike off technology."
These changes though did not produce a higher voter turnout in 2018 than had been the case in 2014. It seems more significant changes are needed.
And we notice that Vancouver has convened an Independent Election Task Force. It is tasked with many goals including encouraging voting. Collecting "feedback on voter satisfaction with the current voting system", and, for that matter, collecting feedback on voter dissatisfaction with the current voting system, was to be one of the ways that the level of voting would be raised.
Certainly, the current voting system could well be cause of low voter turnout. Increasing the number of Effective Votes (the ones used to elect someone) seems to be a method to achieve this, although it seems to me that voters perceiving that their votes are important would be important way to encourage voting.
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At its Regular Council meeting on January 20, 2016, Council approved the creation of an Independent Election Task Force with a broad mandate to:
...create a plan for advancing previous Council directives to staff regarding electoral procedures including:
(a) Request to Province for ability to implement campaign finance reforms including limits to contributions and a ban on corporate and union donations;
(b) Request to Province for ability to use proportional voting systems;
(c) Request to Province to make anonymous balloting data available in open data format after an election;
(d) Request to Province to conduct an online voting pilot; and
(e) The priority actions from the Engaged City Task Force and the Healthy City Strategy *
*The Engaged City Task Force and Healthy City Strategy priority action items include:
-Increasing the number of “positive cues” to encourage voting;
- Targeting voter registration;
- Investigating the extension of voting rights to permanent residents;
- Using the election ballot to get feedback on voter satisfaction with the current voting system;
- Taking action on campaign finance reform.
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The Engaged City Task Force was given the goal of increasing the municipal voter turnout to at least 60 per cent by 2025. This seems ambitious, but with a thorough overhaul of the current voting system, it may be achievable.
To encourage voters to come out in greater numbers, voters must be made to feel that each vote is important and that a change in the way votes are cast will create a noticeable change who is elected.
The more direct the connection between voters and representatives, the more will voters realize the importance of voting and the more of them will vote.
But direct connection means that Vancouver must open itself to the unknown if it wants to see democracy flourish - voters must be given power to set the agenda for city administration, experiments must be tried - only through trial and experimentation can voters learn what it is they need and want their city government to do, and to learn what city government is capable of.
Analysis of the 2018 election shows a too-high prevalence of wasted votes, of disregarded and ignored voters.
Here are the statistics that prove this dismaying state of affairs:
176,000 voters participated
Mayor
Kennedy was elected with 49,705 votes out of about 175,000 votes cast. 29 percent of votes cast.
Kennedy had barely more than 1000 votes more than his nearest competitor (Sim) with about 75,000 other votes going to lesser contenders.
It is not known if Sim or some other candidate, not Kennedy, might have been the choice of a majority of the voters if a majority of votes was required to be elected.
Councillors
10 councillors elected at large
Each voter cast could cast up to 10 votes. Each voter cast about eight votes on an average so there was a massive vote count.
1.4M votes were counted in the councillor elections.
This massive vote count did not produce very democratic results as we shall see.
61 candidates
(Vancouver's multi-seat at-large district did offer voters a wide range of candidates and parties to choose from. But the Block Voting system gave each voter up to ten votes so they could scatter their votes pretty promiscuously among them, making the voters' intent unclear and obscuring any transparency that would have been created by a Single Voting, where each voter casts only a single vote.)
The style of election currently used in Vancouver city elections means that candidates are often elected by only a minority of the voters.
The most popular candidate received more votes than the successful mayor. But even so was elected by just a minority of the voters.
Carr received 70,000 votes. This showed support from less than 40 percent of the voters.
The least popular successful candidate, Kirby-Yung received 44,000 votes. This showed support from less than 25 percent of the voters.
So each of these successful candidate received support from less than a majority of voters.
Kirby-Yung had barely more than 1600 votes more than her nearest competitor. All the votes of the even less popular candidates were disregarded. But if votes had been able to be transferred, the seats may have gone to other candidates than the candidates that were elected under the Block Voting FPTP election contests.
Many votes were wasted, many voters unrepresented
The 10 successful candidates received 505,000 votes;
the unsuccessful candidates received 900,000 votes.
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The multiple votes cast by the voters makes it impossible to to measure the level of party support, but these parties filled the seats:
Non-Partisan Association (pro-business, "corporate downtown"-minded) took five of the ten seats.
Green Party took three seats.
Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) (tenants, environmentalists, labour movement) took two seats.
OneCity (a relatively recently formed party took one of the ten seats.
In each case, the most-popular candidate of each party took the seats.
But note that the Vision Vancouver group took no seats although all together its candidates received 137,549. But how many voters gave five of their eight votes to each of the members of that slate and thus overlapped their votes cannot be known. But if only a couple thousand more had given one of their votes to the Vision's incumbent city councillor, she would have been re-elected.
Cumulative Voting as an alternative
If voters had been able to pile their votes on a candidate, she might have been re-elected. This sort of thing can be done under Cumulative Voting. But that sort of thing works best when it is organized and when slate are reduced to minimum, to a statistical nicety.
This is the opposite method and goal of STV, which is that anyone can run, voters are able to choose from as wide a range of of candidates as possible and the voter-dictated transfers allow votes to be centralized organically so as to prevent waste that such a rich field of candidates may otherwise cause.
Cumulative Voting was used and found wanting back at the turn of the 20th Century, with reformers' interest and energy being re-directed to pursuit of STV.
STV as an alternative
Just as CV might have elected Vision's Deal, perhaps STV might have elected her as well.
If the votes that had been "wasted" under Block Voting, had been able to be transferred to where they might have done good, perhaps Deal might have been re-elected.
All the thousands of votes cast for candidates belonging to less-popular groups such as Coalition Vancouver, Vancouver First, Yes Vancouver and ProVancouver might have ensured the re-election of Deal or the election of at least one candidate of each of the parties if they had been able to be transferred, instead of having to be left where they were among the 900,000 votes that were wasted in the election.
Because vote splitting is such a problem under Block Voting -- due to the absence of transferable votes -- an attempt was made to organize a lean progressive slate ahead of time.
This is similar to the related phenomena, strategic voting. Both are clunky un-democratic liberty-quelling go-arounds to make up for inherent weaknesses in the current poorly-engineered electoral system.
Attempt to organize slate to prevent vote-splitting
In advance of 2018 election, five progressive political parties arranged to put up a limited slate so that the progressives would suffer as little as possible from vote-splitting. The five parties as a whole in the end put up 14 candidates, four more than the number of empty seats. But fewer than they might have put up without this co-ordination. This proved obviously to be too large a number, and it seems the parties as a whole suffered from this dissipation of their progressive voting strength.
Meanwhile the business slate, the so-called Non-Partisan Association, limited its number of candidates to only eight and seems to have secured more seats due to that single-mindedness.
In advance of the 2018 municipal election, the Vancouver and District Labour Council brokered a deal among the Green Party, the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), OneCity, Vision Vancouver and the "Jean Swanson for Council" campaign, to avoid a loss of voting strength due to vote splitting by limiting each party's number of candidates.
The labour council’s goal was to persuade the parties to agree to limit their combined total number of candidates to the number of available seats — 10 for council, nine for school board and seven for park board. But at least for the councillor seats, it never did prevent an excess size of the combined slate, resulting in lost voting power.
OneCity ran two candidates, electing one.
COPE ran three candidates including Jean Swanson. She was elected.
Vision Vancouver ran five candidates, the same as the number of sitting councillors it had just before the 2018 election. These candidates were incumbent councillor Deal and four new candidates Paz, Zhang, Evans, and Cardona.
It had been elected to six seats in the 2014 election. Councillor Meggs resigned in 2017.
So Vision only had five seats on the council prior to the 2018 election (and a majority of the park board commissioners and the school trustees). Sitting councillors Jang, Louie, Stevenson and Reimer did not run for re-election. Vision Vancouver elected no councillors in 2018, despite its large slate. Not even its incumbent city councillor, Deal, was elected.
The Green Party originally agreed to run only three candidates but in the event ran four candidates. Its top three candidates won, and Its fourth-most-popular candidate came close to being elected.
The combined slate was 14 so four in excess of the ten councillor seats. (The Tyee, July 31, 2018)
Five were elected but nine were not.
With the multiple voting scheme, it is unclear but it seems that if the Labour Council had been able to limit the combined slate to only say 7 or eight candidates, it is possible that more than five might have been elected, perhaps six or seven.
Non-Partisan Association
The business slate, NPA, ran eight candidates, four more than its number of sitting councillors, and elected five of them. Its narrow field of candidate concentrated its votes among its candidates while the 14-seat progressive slate did not do this.
De Genova was re-elected. Sitting councillors Bremner (first elected in 2017), Affleck and Ball did not seek re-election. Four new candidates (Hardwick, Dominato, Bligh and Kirby-Yung) were elected as well.
Progressive majority after 2018 election
Following the election, labour/left had a majority on council. Five council seats were held by Green, COPE and OneCity, and progressives could probably count on the support of Mayor Kennedy, sitting as an Independent but formerly a sitting NDP MP.
Two weaknesses of Block Voting
In addition to the large number of wasted votes and unrepresented voters described above, the "plurality at-large" system, otherwise known as Block Voting, also resulted in candidates being elected with the support of only a minority of voters. And it also results in candidates being elected by widely-varying numbers of votes.
Election by widely-varying numbers of votes
The last thing is the easiest to show. The most-popular candidate for a council seat received 70,000 votes; the least-popular successful candidate received two-thirds of this amount - 44,000. But they each got the same number of seats -- one. And were thus each given the same power in city hall.
(The advantage of STV is that each candidate theoretically needs the same number of votes to be elected. That holds true, if they are elected through receiving a quota of votes.
Another way to be elected under STV is to hang on to the end when the field of candidates narrows to a point where they equal the number of remaining open seats. But even in that last case, the candidates at the end have usually a very similar number of votes - those with fewer votes have been eliminated and those with more than quota have had their surplus transferred away to aid others.
The relatively uniform number of votes held by successful candidates under STV is one of the ways that system produces fairness between candidates and between parties. It is one of the ways that under STV the number of seats secured by each party is related to the number of votes it receives.)
Vancouver's experience of STV
Interestingly, Vancouver used STV for its city elections in 1921 to 1923. According to one PR enthusiast, STV was cancelled after arousing the "natural opposition of ward politicians and others who experienced difficulties in controlling city elections."
The referendum that voted for the cancellation of STV was a victory for a group that was described as "a limited and very selfish group."
It seems judging by the present election system used in Vancouver, that it is time for Vancouver voters to experience STV once more.
Minority election of councillors
Another weakness of Block Voting is the election of candidates with only minority support.
(Of course in STV, the quota, the amount of votes required to win a seat, is always a minority. But the total of the votes received by all the successful candidates will be a majority.
In the case where all the seats are filled by quota, the number of votes received by the successful candidates under STV will be all the votes minus one quota, say anywhere from five- sixths to 10/11ths of the number of valid votes (leaving aside exhausted votes).
In cases where the last seat or seats are filled without quota, by the thinning of the field of candidates, through elimination and/or elections, the number of votes received by the successful candidates will be all the valid votes minus a number less than quota (again leaving aside exhausted votes).
Thus under STV, the majority of seats in a district corresponds to a majority of voters. And with each voter casting only a singe vote, it is easy to see this -- that a majority of voters elects a majority of the seats in a district.)
The 2018 Vancouver city election shows us that under Block Voting, it is possible for a voting group with no more than 40 percent of the voters to take every single seat, leaving no representation for the majority of voters.
Of the ten successful candidates, no one candidate took more than 40 percent of the votes and 40 percent of the voters could have put one each of their ten votes on each of ten candidates and secured all their election.
It is only the candidates' party identification that leads us to believe that this did not happen in 2018.
In other cities' elections, there is no party identification so the result is even more shadowy.
(In the case of Edmonton's elections, there is no way a single voting block can elect more than one councillor because the city's voters are arbitrarily divided into separate divided wards. And the voters in each ward elects a different councillor. Or, should I say, the largest group in each ward elects a single councillor who then will theoretically represent all the voters in the ward.
But whether the elected councillors share a single political ideology is unknown to voters, or even to learn what their political beliefs are is really some kind of a guessing game for voters and city residents since there are no party identification to aid discovery.)
When councillors are elected in wards, there is some kind of polite fiction that each councillor can represent all the viewpoints within that geographical district. There arises a game of pretend acting that each councillor even wants to represent all the viewpoints. Each ward politician has to assume this fiction because he or she needs the votes of the largest group within the district for re-election.
(While under STV a candidate to be re-elected just needs quota - usually an amount between a sixth and an 11th of the valid votes. And this group of voters can be assembled across a wide multi-seat district, and can be made up of voters who instinctively and naturally share the sentiment of the candidate. There is no pay-acting, no polite fiction.
The successful candidate has the loyalty of the group; and the group forms itself in support of the candidate.)
Under STV, if a group has quota, it elects a candidate. And there is nothing the other groups can do about it.
It does not matter if another group has more votes - there is no FPTP foot-race aspect to a STV election.
And in a multi-seat contest, more than one group can win seats - there is no winner-take-all aspect to STV elections.
In the 2018 Vancouver election, each of the successful candidates had the support of no more than 40 percent of the voters.
Of the 176,000 votes participating in the election, only 40 percent supported the most-popular candidate who won a council seat.
The least-popular successful candidate, Kirby-Yung, received support from less than 25 percent of the voters.
The same holds true for the election of the seven park board commissioners and members of the school board.
Park board commissioners
Seven to be elected.
Each voter could cast up to seven votes.
1.2M votes had to be counted due to this Multiple Voting.
The most-popular park board commissioner candidate, Mackinnon, took just 74,000 votes, showing support from 42 percent of the voters.
The least-popular successful candidate, John Irwin, received support from only about 26 percent of the voters.
School board trustees
Nine to be elected
Each voter cast up to nine votes.
Voters cast 1,088,550 votes. More than 1M votes were cast due to this Multiple Voting.
33 candidates
The most popular school board candidate, Janet Fraser of the Green Party, took 75,000 votes. This showed support from only 43 percent of the voters.
The least-popular successful candidate, Allan Wong, received support from less than 27 percent of the voters.
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Guaranteed Native representation on council
On July 6, 2014, COPE members passed a policy statement that supported the local Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations each gaining “representation” on council.
Apparently nothing since then has been effectively changed to allow this to take place.
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Vancouver is set to hold a citizens' assembly to assess the need for and direction of electoral reform of city elections.
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My recommendation:
for mayoral elections:
Adopt Alternative Voting (Instant-Runoff Voting), to ensure that to be elected a majority of votes is required.
for elections of councillors, park board commissioners, school trustees:
adopt STV
- maintain the at-large multi-seat district
- reduce the number of votes that each voter can cast to just one, and make it a transferable preferential vote.
A multi-member district and Single Voting, with appropriate training for voters and election officials, is all that is needed to establish STV.
Under STV,
No one group can take all the seats.
Mixed roughly proportional representation will be produced.
Each successful candidate will receive about the same number of votes.
Each unsuccessful candidate receives fewer votes than each of the successful candidates (not the case when voters are divided into separate wards).
More-competitive elections will likely ensure a higher quality of elected representatives, or at least one where a larger number of voters are satisfied with the result.
Just one vote per participating voter will need to be counted.
Effective votes - votes used to elect someone - will rise to about 80 or 90 percent of valid votes.
Voter turnout will increase.
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Thanks for reading.
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Further note on at-large voting
Vancouver's at-large election method is sometimes criticized but Dennis Pilon points out how it is popular among voters:
"Vancouver uses an at-large voting system for its city elections, which was adopted in the 1930s. There have been six referendums on whether or not to get rid of that system. They've all failed. The public, which you claim is so focused on local matters, has chosen to keep an at-large system, and it is divided strictly on partisan lines. Supporters of the right-wing party have seen that this at-large system works for them, so they want to keep it. The left-wingers think it's really bad and want to move to a ward system, but because the right-wing voters are more likely to come out and vote, they win. The less privileged voters, who are less likely to come out and vote, lose."
from Pilon's evidence to the ERRE commission, 2016
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