The reporting of the popular vote, both in last November's presidential election and this month's provincial election, is an irrelevant number that media outlets love to report but it simply bewilders the casual voter who wonders how someone could have the most votes and still lose.
Hilary Clinton had more than two million greater votes than Donald Trump but Trump is president. It appears that B.C. Liberals will have two more seats in the Legislature than the NDP, despite the fact the two parties received nearly the identical number of votes around the province.
The Electoral College in the U.S. and first-past-the-post voting are why the national popular vote is meaningless in presidential elections and the riding and electoral district system, combined with first-past-the-post, are why provincial popular votes have nothing to do with who gets to be the premier of B.C. or the prime minister of Canada.
And we wonder why people don't vote.
It's puzzling as quantum theory to people who don't follow politics.
Even worse, a basic understanding of the system exposes the lies of one person, one vote and everyone's vote is valuable.
Neither is true.
Elections B.C. reports that there are just 22,382 people in the North Coast electoral district. That is less than half of the number of residents in Prince George-Mackenzie (46,562) and Prince-George Valemount. Much fewer voters get to pick an MLA for North Coast than get to pick an MLA in Prince George. Put another way, a North Coast vote has double the impact it does in Prince George. Meanwhile, there are two Surrey MLAs representing more than 75,000 people each. A North Coast vote is worth three-and-a-half times as much as a vote in Surrey-Cloverdale and Surrey-Panorama. If democracy is about votes being equal, people living in Surrey are getting hosed at the expense of rural residents.
Electoral reform sounds like a great idea to address these kinds of democratic problems, except each fix brings with it an equally confusing mechanism to value votes, weigh preferences and choose individual and party winners.
As if journalists weren't bad enough, the complexity of the voting system is exacerbated by politicians who twist the numbers around to suit their agendas. John Horgan and Andrew Weaver can argue until they're orange and green in the face that the majority of B.C. voters cast a ballot for change on May 9 but they know, better than most, why that doesn't matter and never has. Talk like that doesn't smear Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals, it tarnishes their own credibility.
By the opposite token, Clark has no legs to stand on if the NDP and Greens form a coaltion to defeat a minority Liberal government and install Horgan as premier. The popular vote will be irrelevant and so will the fact the Liberals have more seats than the NDP. If she complains, she's no better than the people who love the rules when they win but demand change when they lose.
Fortunately in Prince George, the municipal elections are perhaps the purest form of voting out there. It is a flat-out popular vote, no muss, no fuss. There is no ward system, setting aside representation for College Height, the Hart or any other neighbourhood on city council. The candidate with the most votes running for mayor becomes mayor. The eight city council candidates with the most votes become city councillors. Strangely, municipal elections never get the same degree of voter turnout that provincial and national elections do, despite the obvious value to voters.
By the same token, the outcome in Courtenay-Comox is also a straight-up popular vote, at least for the constituents of that electoral district. For the rest of the province, however, those handful of votes won't just decide who represents those communities but possibly which party forms government and which leader becomes premier.
For the 2017 election at least, a vote in Courtenay-Comox is worth far more than a vote in most other ridings, especially Prince George. At least every vote counts there.
As the shenanigans roll out over the coming days and weeks about which party is the rightful winner of the provincial election and which leader speaks for the people, it's just a reminder that elections and partisan bickering never actually end, no matter what the final count shows.
It's also further proof that all all votes are equal, except when they're not.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
