Warning to Edmonton voters - your vote will likely not be used to elect anyone in 2025 municipal election

Edmonton will go to the polls in October 2025

The ballots should say -

Warning:

your vote will likely not be used to elect anyone

In the last Edmonton election, more votes were wasted than were used to elect anyone.

99,000 votes were used to elect the winners -- 137,488 votes were ignored.

In most of the ward contests, the majority of votes cast were not used to elect the ward winner.

The winner in each case was the choice of just a minority of voters in the ward.

If you voted in 2021, ask yourself “did your vote actually elect anyone?”

Most have to answer “NO.”

As well, in 2021 many did not vote for their preferred choice.

If you voted in 2021, did you place your vote on your preferred candidate or for a lesser preference so your vote would have a better chance to be used?

Did you like a candidate but found you did not live in his or her district?

There is a better way.

City-wide -- get rid of the wards that divide the city and elect city councillors at-large city-wide

One vote -- give each voter one vote, same as now.

Ranked votes -- allow each voter to mark back-up preferences, to be used if first preference is marked

for a candidate who turns out to be un-electable.

Under Single Transferable Voting, 80 or 90 percent of the votes will be used to elect the winners.

Each voter will have liberty to place vote on whom they actually support, knowing there is an opportunity for the vote to be transferred to where it could be used if at first placed badly.

Most of the voters will see their first-preference candidate elected.

The mayor will be chosen by the majority of councillors.

(The mayor has just one vote anyway, so why make a big thing of who is mayor?

Under the new way, prominent candidates would not be sidelined by unsuccessful mayoral bids.)

Any group that has 1/14th of the votes in the city will be elected, and the others could not stop them.

Elected member will not pretend to represent people who don't like him but will only need to represent his or her own supporters. Currently the councillor is expected to pretend to represent all the people in his or her ward even if most of them voted against the councillor. This is illogical.

Edmonton needs a Logical and Democratic election system

Single Transferable Voting -- the Logical and Democratic choice

Let's make elections make sense!

(for more info on STV and electoral reform, check out the blogsite Montopedia (wix.site)

=====================