Students will soon be confronted with eager election candidates hoping to sit on the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council. What’s unfortunate about these upcoming general elections is the outdated electoral system which does not produce results that represent student interests.
If you were to break down the results of every single executive race in last January’s elections, you could read a story that repeats itself. The successful candidate triumphs over a rival by an average margin of three per cent, and the third place candidate trails with about 12 per cent of the popular vote. In fact, the most successful slate (Your Carleton) came into power with an aggregate total of over 16,000 student votes being cast to their candidates. Your Carleton was followed by Change CUSA, who collectively earned slightly over 15,000 votes. Although Change CUSA had only four per cent less of the popular vote, they won only a single executive seat.
If you’re unfamiliar with the issues surrounding electoral reform, imagine you are in a group of 6,500 citizens who get to vote on the Iron Throne’s next ruler. The three choices are Joffrey Baratheon, Balon Greyjoy, and Daenerys Targaryen. Each citizen gets only one vote, and the winner just needs to win more votes than any other candidate. This system is called first past the post (FPTP). It’s a common way to elect a leader but it is problematic when determining the candidate who people truly want. In the Iron Throne election, Joffrey wins 2,900 votes (45 per cent), Daenerys wins 2,750 votes (42 per cent), and Balon wins 850 votes (13 per cent).
The vote count would mean Joffrey is reelected even though more than half of the voters didn’t want him in power. Daenerys looked promising but Balon’s good-hearted efforts to win the election not only failed, but his third party-status led to a least preferred candidate being elected to the Iron Throne.
You might be asking yourself what might happen if Balon chose not to run and instead threw his support to Daenerys to fight Joffrey. Ultimately, the results would be very different. This effect, appropriately called the “spoiler effect,” is inevitable in all FPTP elections. FPTP ensures that the candidate with the plurality wins no matter how close the race.
The elections for executive positions in CUSA are conducted through FPTP. This was highlighted in the race for our vice-president (student life) in 2015, when Sean Smith narrowly beat John Mesman by 42 votes—less than one per cent.
Proportional representation could fix this broken electoral system by more accurately representing voter interests. However, the lack of a single direct representative for students’ issues would erode accountability and relations between executives and students. The alternative vote system is a runoff voting system which has been proposed in which candidates can be ranked by preference on a scale.
By ranking our candidates by preference, voters can guarantee the consent of the majority for the winning candidate, and, most importantly, ensure that every vote counts. This system to prevent the spoiler effect from taking place has been used to elect Conservative and Liberal party leaders, and has been approved to elect future municipal politicians and the next Speaker of the House of Commons.
If ranked voting is used as a model in elections for many Canadian political offices, what prevents us from applying this approach when electing our student leaders? Electoral reform through ranked voting will ensure that we have a greater say in deciding who wins CUSA’s Game of Thrones.
