It is said to be Albert Einstein who claimed that insanity was when you kept doing things the same way and expected different results. That sounds like a reasonable description of the conservative party of Canada’s current Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC). There might be some different members of the committee but they must be insane to continue to use ranked voting in the party’s leadership selection.
Ranked voting is often considered the lazy person’s run-off balloting. When there are only three or four candidates and a candidate gets a majority of votes on the first ballot, it is the same as first-past-the-post balloting.
But when there are five or more names on the ballot and nobody gets a majority of votes on the first ballot, the insanity takes over. The system dictates that the candidate with the least votes be dropped from the count and the second choice on those ballots be counted in the totals.
What makes anyone think that the second choice of these loser ballots will be any more astute than their first choice?
What I have always said about ranked ballots is that the more candidates there are, the worse your final choice can be. You are actually drilling down in the appeal of the candidates.
One of your problems in these multiple counts are the voters who did not make a second, third, fourth or fifth choice. You find that the total votes are decreasing as you work your way through the ballots.
One of the ways of hiding this decreasing vote, LEOC has found, is to apply equal weighting to all 338 federal electoral districts across Canada. This takes away votes from your strong ridings and adds weight to your weak ones. Maybe that is just another touch of conservative insanity.
While I have always been a supporter of run-off elections—with some time allowed for reflection on the question—it would require more trust in computer network voting to keep costs within reason. Until then, first-past-the-post voting remains your trusted system.
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