General Politics Discussion

[danbrotherston]

I think the concept of taking the second place winner makes no sense when there are parties involved and that doesn't change with ranked ballots.

When parties are involved, it makes more sense that the winning party can select a new representative to serve the term, than it would to pick a different party.

But in my opinion, the thing that makes the most sense is to run another election...but seems there is often no appetite for that at a municipal level, unlike at a provincial or federal level.

Just a ground check here: parties don't exist, right? They are not constitutional organs. They have no role "selecting" anyone, outside of passing public trusts around among their members.

Parties do exist: they're like dual citizenship, where the holders are tasked to gain and hold power "elsewhere" (i.e., here). We get all paranoid about the influence of China and India that we can police, and say nothing about centuries of entrenched homegrown machinations.


The "second place winner" idea does have merit: they're the "next past the post", no permission from any party required. I do agree the best solution is to run another election, like keeping a seized joint exercised.

I mean, the whole "parties don't exist" is silly...plenty of things exist that aren't written into the constitution or even the broader set of governing laws, plenty of things IN our government as well. Parties are even written on the ballot.

I don't believe "second place winner" has any merit in a political system like the Canadian federal or provincial system which has parties. People...largely...vote for (or against) parties (or party leaders) not the individuals (no matter what they tell themselves...).

In the Canadian system where we are usually in practice choosing between all of 3 options, choosing the second place option, IMO would be subverting the will of the people.

Take the hypothetical, the winning candidate who is no longer available, never existed, and the party selected a different candidate in the original election. I believe the chances are very high that the new hypothetical person would have been still have been elected, rather than a different party being elected.

Hence, the "second place winner" is necessarily less representative of the democratic will than the party selecting a new MP.

(Of course, there is no mechanism for that in our federal government, nor I believe for the second place candidate to be selected, I'm pretty sure the ONLY option is to run a byelection which we both agree, is the preferred option. So both options are equally incompatible with our constitution.)

But even in a non-party system like the region's local government, I find it dubious at best to select the second place winner, but less dubious if we had a ranked ballot where you can at least evaluate who those voters would have voted for.