Elxn41

I was out of the country for this election so I got to vote by special ballot. It takes more envelopes than you might expect. I was also surprised that I should require postage to mail in my vote. I though mailing the government was free in Canada.

They are in the midst of an election here in Peru now as well. They had their first round of voting in early April. Since none of the 11 candidates got more than 50% of the vote, a second round will take place in June with the top 2 candidates. I wish our system had a similar way of preventing the problems associated with vote splitting (either a runoff system like in Peru or a system where each voter ranks all candidates.)  We also learned that voting is mandatory here in Peru subject to a S./100 fine.

35.50 + 11.84 > 47.09 … sigh

Rob Ford: 47.09

George Smitherman: 35.50

Joe Pantalone: 11.84%

53.2% of eligible voters actually voted. Apparently this is a good voter turnout for a municipal election.

Not sure if this was just a coincidence, but Seth Godin’s blog post today is very timely:

“When attention is scarce and there are many choices, media costs something other than money. It costs interesting. If you are angry or remarkable or an outlier, you’re interesting, and your idea can spread. People who are dull and merely aligned with powerful interests have a harder time earning attention, because money isn’t sufficient.”

Voting Day

 

I have a bad feeling that Rob Ford is going to become Toronto’s next mayor because Joe Pantalone will eat away at George Smitherman’s numbers even though the majority do not want Ford as mayor. Toronto needs to update its archaic ‘first-past-the-post’ voting system. ‘Instant runoff voting’ where voters rank all candidates would remove the need for strategic voting and prevent vote splitting. 8 cities in the US use instant runoff voting already and 5 more have approved it for their next election.