Why Canada Needs a Rank-Choice Voting System

It's election day in Canada today.  While living in this democracy is pretty great, there are always ways to improve and make sure that each vote really counts.  The best way to do that is by allowing Canadians to change from the "first-past-the-post system" to a "rank-choice system".

What's the difference?

Canada's current system, "first-past-the-post", is the most basic of systems.  Voters indicate on their ballot which candidate they want as their Member of Parliament and the candidate who has the most votes wins.  Then the party (or the group of parties in a coalition) with the most MPs elected gets to form the government.  The leader of that party or coalition of parties becomes the prime minister.

It's not a bad system, but the problem is this allows for parties and MPs who receive between 30% to 40% of the popular vote to form a government.  It just doesn't feel as legitimate in a democracy to have a government that over 60% of voters didn't vote for.

My suggestion: rank-choice voting.

Sample ballot for rank-choice voting

In this system, voters are asked to rank which candidates they want as their first, second and third choice to represent them as their MP.  If a candidate gets more than 50% of the votes as the "first choice", then that person gets elected.  If none of the candidates get more than 50% of the votes as the "first choice", then the candidate with the least amount of votes gets eliminated.  The voters who selected that eliminated candidate as their first choice will then have their votes added to the totals of their second choice.  The process continues until one candidate gets over the 50% hurdle and is elected.

This will work particularly well in Canada because at any given federal election, there are at least 4 or 5 main parties vying for votes.

Why is this better?

Prevents Strategic Voting
Whenever there's a federal election campaign in Canada and polls show that one disliked party is likely to win with about 35% of the votes, there's always talk of strategic voting. Instead of voting for the candidate that they truly want to vote for, people will instead choose the "lesser evil" candidate they THINK has the best likelihood of winning against the disliked candidate.  So in this case, voters aren't really voting for something as they are voting against something else.

In Canada, despite having multiple legitimate parties, voters finally end up choosing one of the two main parties.  Again, this is because of the false perception that a third or fourth party has "no chance of winning" and voting for them will "split the vote".  With rank-choice voting, you remove this problem.  You can vote your first choice in, but your second and third choices will ensure that votes don't get split and you're not inadvertently voting for the party that you really don't want in power.

Creates a more educated voter
Because you now have multiple options, a voter is now going to have the incentive to look at other parties' platforms. They won't just end up picking one of the major parties because they don't like the platform of the other major opposing party.  In a healthy democracy, a more educated voter just means that the leaders they elect, for better or worse, truly represent the citizenry.  


Prevents the election of extremists
Historically, democratically elected extremists have targeted a small, but loud minority.  The problem is, in a system like Canada where having 30% to 35% of the popular vote is enough to bring a party in power, this is a possibility.  Vote splitting with other parties caused by the "first past the post" system can lead to this outcome.  With rank choice voting, this won't happen because a majority of electors would eventually overcome the 35% of extremists with their second or third choices.

Opens up new parties and ideas
On the other side of the coin, while the major parties are more likely to win with the second or third choice vote, the mechanism of rank choice voting allows voters to really vote the way they want on their first choice.  This can lead to some surprising first choice outcomes if enough voters truly believe in what they're voting for.  What that means is that the party that isn't supposed to win can actually have a legitimate shot. Whether that party wins or not, it sends a clearer message to politicians that these new parties' ideas are actually important to voters.

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Bottom line, there's no such thing as a perfect candidate or political platform.  On the economic issues, I personally agree with one party.  On social issues, I'll agree with another.  On environmental issues, I'll agree with a third party.  And so on.  In terms of immigration, I'll disagree with one, but agree with the ideas from two different parties. My guess is that most Canadian voters are in the same boat as me.

If we had a rank choice voting system, this would make voting easier.  I can weigh the different issues that are the most important to me and come up with a first, second and third choice of candidate.  Rank choice voting means that I'm not stuck settling.  My vote will actually matter and I won't feel like I have to simply prevent the "most evil" candidate from winning by voting for the "lesser evil".  In the long run, this kind of system will force politicians to become less extreme and more reasonable

5 Tips to Help You Win an Election

It's election season again in Canada. It can be fun to see what strategies each political party leader is using to win over their voters.  Some are working better than others, but if I ever become a politician and decide to run for office, here's what I would do to win.

Tip # 1: Don't pretend to be "perfect"
One of the problems with politicians is that they like to project an image of a leader that's above the common folk, that their values and thoughts are superior.  They want to show themselves as the perfect candidate, wearing the perfect clothes, the perfect family and always saying the perfect slogans, participating at the "right" events. So guess what happens when the dirt comes out that goes against that perfect image?  They immediately lose credibility.

What's actually better is to be somewhat less polished. Look at some of the democratically-elected world leaders who gained traction in the past few years and see how less-than-perfect their public images have been.

If you have any flaws as a human being (which we all do), don't be afraid to get called out on it.  Don't be afraid to laugh at yourself when you make a mistake.  Which brings me to my next point...

Tip # 2: Take ownership of your past
If I were running for office, I would make sure to prevent any potential scandals that could derail my campaign by being upfront at the beginning.  I will start by immediately publicly admitting past mistakes.  At the very beginning of the campaign, I'll post pictures of myself getting drunk and/or high on social media, videos of me making borderline racist jokes, and controversial blog posts or op-ed pieces that I may have written.

What you're doing is getting all the dirt out of the way as soon as possible.  You're telling the voters: "Yes, I'm human.  Yes, I've made mistakes in the past as you can see. I apologize if I hurt people before with the foolish behaviours of my youth.  I've changed since then.  I've evolved.  I've learned, I'm now wiser and ready to be your leader."

You can apologize if you want, but it's usually easier to do it once and then move on.  Yes, even if you are Canadian.  Sure it will hit the "news cycle" and it might hurt your numbers at first. But after a couple of weeks, when a new scandal, natural disaster, celebrity sex tape or a new provocative piece of "news" hits, most people would have forgotten your admitted mistakes and they won't affect your results come election time.

The idea is to control the narrative and not give your opponents the chance to portray you the way they want. This move also gives you the image of being a "flawed human" who can be a good leader because you have "proven" that you can learn from your mistakes.  You become more relatable.  You'll also be seen as transparent and not hiding anything.

So what's the best way to control your narrative?

Tip # 3: Use "new media" more than (if not as much as) "traditional media"
The problem with traditional media like TV, radio and other ads is that you have to make sure that you can get your views, your personality and why your opponent is wrong in very short, 15 to 30 second sound bites. Now you have to depend on your voters to pay attention and put together all the different sound bites so they can get an idea of what you're trying to communicate before they can vote.

You also have to depend on the goofy political debate formats where nobody really answers questions.  Instead everyone's trying to cram their talking points in where it seems appropriate. Worst of all are the political ads.  They're expensive to produce, it's expensive to buy time and most people probably don't think they're credible at all.

The better strategy is using new media, like YouTube, social media sites and even podcasts.  You have full control over what you say on a YouTube video.  You won't get interrupted by an interviewer because they need to get small sound bite before going to a laundry detergent commercial.  You'll be able to talk as long or as little as you want to explain your positions and policies.  You can respond more clearly to criticisms and you can interact almost instantaneously with your constituents from any where in the country.

Using certain social media sites, you can show the "behind-the-scenes" of your campaign. Or how human and relatable you are.  You just have to be careful to not be too perfect with your posts, because it's very easy to see when someone's pretending to be authentic.

What's even better is that you're making it easier for traditional journalists to get the information they need from your campaign because it's all accessible.  You get to be top-of-mind.  And of course, all this is relatively cheap when compared to buying ad space or paying PR firms to get you on TV and radio shows with dwindling audiences.  All you need is good lighting, an intern holding a smartphone and your YouTube and social media accounts.  If you provide entertaining, but politically relevant content, you're good to go.

Tip # 4: Find the quiet majority's opinion
It's quite easy for opinions to be swayed by what the media likes to highlight as "important issues" of the day.  The common cliché is that the traditional mainstream media will normally highlight the loud, minority opinion because they can sometimes be so extreme (on both the left and the right side of the political spectrum), that it gets more ratings, views and clicks.

If you truly want to get elected, you might want to actually talk to your constituents instead of watching the news media's version of what the constituents want.  Most of the time, you'll find that a lot of "hot-button" issues are really non-issues to the common voter, and a lot of issues that are being ignored by the media are really the most important ones to the electorate.

Once you find the true pain points of your voters, the easier it will be to come to them with a solution that only you can provide.

Tip # 5: Destroy your opponents' credibility
The most interesting thing about elections to me has always been the marketing problem that each candidate faces.  They are trying to position themselves to appear a certain way to voters, while at the same time trying to position their opponents in a very negative way.  If you want to make your opponent look bad, there's no point in lying or spreading misinformation about their positions.  All you need to do is to find a way to diminish their credibility.  The simplest way to do that is by making them look like hypocrites.

This will work the best because most candidates are still stuck in the past and haven't followed Steps 1 and 2 above.  In all likelihood, most politicians are hiding some kind of secret that will conflict with their proposed policies.  For example, if your opponent is championing diversity, equality and is depicting themselves as the "inclusively woke" candidate, finding old pictures of them wearing a racist Halloween costume or recordings of them going on drunken, anti-Semitic rants can be very damaging.  If your opponent is the pro-family values candidate, finding old videos of them smoking crack cocaine while partying with sex workers is not going to be good for their image.  You get the point.

Whether or not their target voters agree with their behaviour isn't the issue.  It's the fact that their proposed policies compared to their past behaviours will make them look like hypocrites that will make them less credible.

Now it goes without saying that when your people find the dirt, you simply have them use anonymous social media accounts and pretend to be "confidential whistleblowers" to leak this information.

Finally, be wise about the timing of your leaks.  You don't want to release these too early.  What you want to do is strategically leak these as soon your opponents' numbers are reaching a peak in the polls.  The damaging information, will cause those numbers to go down and put the opposition on the defensive.  As soon as they get their numbers back up again, that's when you release another piece of damaging information to put them back on the defensive again.  Just hope that you have enough dirt so you can repeat the process over and over throughout the duration of the campaign.

So that's it.  Five simple tips that any political candidate needs to follow in this era.  If you look closely, you'll notice that more and more politicians will begin using these strategies in the future.