Leadership Vote Questions
November 29, 2006 · By Aaron Unruh
Commenter TSS:
Only the eliminated candidate’s second choices are counted. Not everyone’s. It doesn’t matter if any of Ted’s or Jim’s voters have Ed as 2nd place if Ed isn’t in the top 2.
Is this right? Or do the second preferences of all candidates get counted in the second round?
Second, are you allowed to “plump” on the ballot or are you required to rank the candidates from 1 to 3?
Not that any of it matters, I hope that people mark 1 for Morton and 2 for Stelmach. But it is important to know how the ballots will work. As we know, the party organization is just looking for excuses to prevent rural Albertans from voting.
The second preferences of the third (dropped) candidate will get counted in the second round.
Plumping the ballot is fine - as far as I’ve been told, an [X] or a check mark will be counted as 1 on the first round of voting. If there is not clear winner and the voter’s first choice is in third place and the voter did not place a second choice, then then the ballot will be discarded.
However, this HAS NOT BEEN CONFIRMED! I have made some inquires, and I hope to have this answered ASAP.
This is the problem with this race. The rules are being kept secret by the party. When I inquired to party officials 3 weeks ago about specific rules, they wouldn’t give me a straight answer. When I inquired about getting a copy of the official rules, they asked who I was working for, and then denied access.
Ask yourself, why are the rules not posted on the Progressive Conservative website and what possible reasons would they have limiting access to the rules?
Here is the extent of the rules on the PC party’s website:
These rules kinda lack the details which could decide this race…
What do you mean they lack the details. That looks pretty clear to me.
iv) The candidate who receives more than half the total valid ballots cast as the first choice, shall be declared the elected leader of the Association.
So, if a candidate gets 50%+1 of the first choice votes, he wins.
The second choices of those who voted for the eliminated candidate shall be transferred to the other two candidates and counted in order to determine the winner
That means that the second choices for the two remaining candidates mean absolutely nothing.
Jeff Gebhart,
The devil is in the details - is a [x] or a check mark an acceptable way to mark you ballot? If no second choice is written (or the mark isn’t 1 or 2), will the ballot be considered spoiled? This wasn’t an issue back when Ralph was first elected, as the third candidate in that races dropped out early.
Considering that this type of voting system is hardly used, many of the voters may not understand the rules, and may not mark the ballot as instructed. Are you willing to open Pandora’s box of court challenges just because the party was unprepared and or unwilling to be upfront with the rules. I want to know how the party officials responsible for counting the votes are being instructed when it comes to these issues.
This question that NEEDS to be addressed before Saturdays vote.
There are many other questions that are left unanswered and or being completed ignored by the party. I’ll be writing about this issues later today and tomorrow.