With all the results now available to the public, the full story of what transpired during the Jan. 28 Progressive Conservative nomination for Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock is now brought into focus.
While it was a reasonably close race, Westlock County Coun. Maureen Kubinec was first choice at each stage of counting the preferential ballots.
Although discrepancies in the counting process became apparent when the results were examined, none of the candidates involved seemed to feel the few votes would have made the difference.
At the end of the day, the constituency association is a private organization and the vote was a members-only affair. If the members involved are content to accept the results for what they are, then there’s no reason for anybody else to cry foul.
The use of the preferential ballot system, however, has proven to be much more complex and perhaps much more prone to error than the traditional first-past-the-post voting method, which is used for all general elections in Canada and its provinces.
More counting leaves the door open to more human error, which some might argue is a reason to stick with the status quo. However, the results obtained using a preferential ballot system leave little doubt about the general consensus of voters.
After the first round, Kubinec had less than one third of the votes, but after going through the process of eliminating candidates, it became apparent that Kubinec was also the most-liked candidate among second-, third- and fourth-place votes.
In this case, the person who won the first-past-the-post count also turned out to be the person with the highest level of support overall, but as we saw with the recent PC leadership race, the consensus candidate is not always everyone’s first choice.
One cannot help but wonder what the current Legislature might look like if general elections also used a preferential ballot. Vote splitting between the NDP and the Liberals may well have meant some Conservative were able to run up the middle, as they say.
Which party wins, however, isn’t the issue here. The issue is ensuring the will of the voters is represented as accurately as possible.
