It's fair to say that Christine Elliott, considered the front runner for the Ontario PC Party was "Hilary Clintoned" (Yup, I've turned the name into a verb) because both were undone by the need to territorialize the procedure of counting of votes. A process that is done with the intention of controlling the so-called unruly mob of cosmopolitan urban voters.
November 2016, Hilary Clinton wins the popular vote, beating Donald Trump by nearly 3 million votes (2,868,691) or 48.2% of all voters to Trump's 46.1%. However, she loses the Presidency because when the state tally of electoral college votes is done, she is down by 77 (Trump 304, Clinton 227). She may have won some of the most populous states in the U.S.A, i.e., California and New York, but she lost most of the rural states, and in rural states the votes are worth more.
In similar fashion, Christine Elliot has just lost the Ontario PC Party leadership race to Doug Ford even though in the first round she won both the popular vote and a plurality of the ridings. Unfortunately, it wasn't the 50 plus that was needed. It's a result that left many of us wondering, can the Ontario PC's ever countenance having a woman leader?
What happened was a preferential ballot that was mediated by the equal weighting given to the 124 provincial ridings. This territorial feature was instituted to ensure the winning candidate would have broad support across all the province rather than being crowned by popular support from dense urban areas. This is similar to how the electoral college works and in both cases it gives much greater weight to rural voters over urban ones.
The preferential ballot used in the PC leadership election asks voters to rank the candidates by first, second, third and fourth choices. In the case that no one candidate is greater than 50% of the voters first choice on the first round, the candidate with the lowest tally (and those with less than 10% support) is dropped off and their second choices redistributed. This goes on until one of the candidates secures more than 50% support. It's like the televised leadership conventions of old where delegates sat in an arena or convention hall and after each round one less candidate was available to vote for, but those candidates would proclaim which remaining candidates their supporters should vote for. Now it's all done online.
In the case of Christin Elliott with a plurality of popular votes and ridings (spread among 4 candidates) on first round but missing the more than 50% to take the prize, the tally goes to a second round. In this round the social conservative candidate Tanya Granic Allen's second choices are redistributed. The majority of these went to the, "not quite sure what he is, but he says he doesn't like sex education or abortion and so probably doesn't like those gay folks either, and he's such a plain talker he doesn't concern us with difficult policy choices" candidate, Doug Ford.
Then the weird territorial stuff kicks in. Unlike the Electoral College which does give states varying numbers of "electoral college votes" which although based on population still tends to over-reward rural states, the 124 Ontario ridings were each given 100 "electoral votes." It did not matter the size of the riding whether it had 300 PC Party members or 1,500. Candidates were awarded "electoral votes" based on their percentage of the vote they received in the riding, e.g., 40% of 300 equaled 40 electoral votes and 40% of 1,500 votes equaled 40 electoral votes. So in the small-populated ridings, that is the rural and more traditional ridings, the individual vote is certainly going to be worth more than in the more dense and cosmopolitan urban ridings.
Then you add in, that on the second round Doug Ford's percentage in each riding is now combined with Tanya Cranic Allen's percentage, compared to Christine Elliott's own/solo percentage and Caroline Mulroney's smaller solo percentage. The result is a Ford victory, and it's not an astonishing victory. His combined total including Tanya Granic Allen's second choice voters was only 150 more than Elliot's solo total. It's a very thin majority, probably somewhere in the realm of 50.5% to 49.5%. But it is enough, and the result is a PC Party that has yet to make it into the 21st century. It's a party that appears scared of a cosmopolitan world of diversity and committed to continuing an agenda of austerity economics that seems passé because we all know it doesn't work because we're still living with the fall out from when Mike Harris tried it 20 years ago.
Preferential ballots are a good idea because it certainly gets rid of the idea of wasted votes, but we need to get beyond the weird territorial formulas that continue to privilege rural votes. As we see here, the rural focus helped skew the preferential ballot, but it also plays a role in undermining urban votes in first-past-the-post systems. It will play a role in the upcoming provincial election. Our current territorial fixation doesn't recognize that many more Ontarians (and Canadian's generally) choose to live in diverse and cosmopolitan cities rather than in the countryside, and I for one am tired of our political choices being dominated by the homogeneity and traditionalism of rural ridings. For one, it certainly seems that the more diverse and cosmopolitan our political discourse is the better it is for women and minorities.
November 2016, Hilary Clinton wins the popular vote, beating Donald Trump by nearly 3 million votes (2,868,691) or 48.2% of all voters to Trump's 46.1%. However, she loses the Presidency because when the state tally of electoral college votes is done, she is down by 77 (Trump 304, Clinton 227). She may have won some of the most populous states in the U.S.A, i.e., California and New York, but she lost most of the rural states, and in rural states the votes are worth more.
In similar fashion, Christine Elliot has just lost the Ontario PC Party leadership race to Doug Ford even though in the first round she won both the popular vote and a plurality of the ridings. Unfortunately, it wasn't the 50 plus that was needed. It's a result that left many of us wondering, can the Ontario PC's ever countenance having a woman leader?
What happened was a preferential ballot that was mediated by the equal weighting given to the 124 provincial ridings. This territorial feature was instituted to ensure the winning candidate would have broad support across all the province rather than being crowned by popular support from dense urban areas. This is similar to how the electoral college works and in both cases it gives much greater weight to rural voters over urban ones.
The preferential ballot used in the PC leadership election asks voters to rank the candidates by first, second, third and fourth choices. In the case that no one candidate is greater than 50% of the voters first choice on the first round, the candidate with the lowest tally (and those with less than 10% support) is dropped off and their second choices redistributed. This goes on until one of the candidates secures more than 50% support. It's like the televised leadership conventions of old where delegates sat in an arena or convention hall and after each round one less candidate was available to vote for, but those candidates would proclaim which remaining candidates their supporters should vote for. Now it's all done online.
In the case of Christin Elliott with a plurality of popular votes and ridings (spread among 4 candidates) on first round but missing the more than 50% to take the prize, the tally goes to a second round. In this round the social conservative candidate Tanya Granic Allen's second choices are redistributed. The majority of these went to the, "not quite sure what he is, but he says he doesn't like sex education or abortion and so probably doesn't like those gay folks either, and he's such a plain talker he doesn't concern us with difficult policy choices" candidate, Doug Ford.
Then the weird territorial stuff kicks in. Unlike the Electoral College which does give states varying numbers of "electoral college votes" which although based on population still tends to over-reward rural states, the 124 Ontario ridings were each given 100 "electoral votes." It did not matter the size of the riding whether it had 300 PC Party members or 1,500. Candidates were awarded "electoral votes" based on their percentage of the vote they received in the riding, e.g., 40% of 300 equaled 40 electoral votes and 40% of 1,500 votes equaled 40 electoral votes. So in the small-populated ridings, that is the rural and more traditional ridings, the individual vote is certainly going to be worth more than in the more dense and cosmopolitan urban ridings.
Then you add in, that on the second round Doug Ford's percentage in each riding is now combined with Tanya Cranic Allen's percentage, compared to Christine Elliott's own/solo percentage and Caroline Mulroney's smaller solo percentage. The result is a Ford victory, and it's not an astonishing victory. His combined total including Tanya Granic Allen's second choice voters was only 150 more than Elliot's solo total. It's a very thin majority, probably somewhere in the realm of 50.5% to 49.5%. But it is enough, and the result is a PC Party that has yet to make it into the 21st century. It's a party that appears scared of a cosmopolitan world of diversity and committed to continuing an agenda of austerity economics that seems passé because we all know it doesn't work because we're still living with the fall out from when Mike Harris tried it 20 years ago.
Preferential ballots are a good idea because it certainly gets rid of the idea of wasted votes, but we need to get beyond the weird territorial formulas that continue to privilege rural votes. As we see here, the rural focus helped skew the preferential ballot, but it also plays a role in undermining urban votes in first-past-the-post systems. It will play a role in the upcoming provincial election. Our current territorial fixation doesn't recognize that many more Ontarians (and Canadian's generally) choose to live in diverse and cosmopolitan cities rather than in the countryside, and I for one am tired of our political choices being dominated by the homogeneity and traditionalism of rural ridings. For one, it certainly seems that the more diverse and cosmopolitan our political discourse is the better it is for women and minorities.
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