by Richard Warnica

A good rule of thumb in electoral politics is that if a single party repeatedly wins by an overwhelming majority, there’s probably something wrong with the election process.

Usually the problem is one of three things: corruption, lack of opposition, or a faulty electoral system.

Which of these explains why the UVSS has not elected a single Director at Large from a party other than Putting Students First (PSF) in over two years?

Well, despite the fact that many UVSS election officials are either former PSFers, or their appointees, nobody is seriously suggesting that the UVSS is corrupt. And despite the lack of a single organized opposition last year, there were sufficient candidates to rule out the lack of opposition option.

So, since neither corruption nor lack of opposition is the problem, the question must be asked–is the UVSS electoral system fair?

The answer is no.

The voting system used by the UVSS produces a one party board precisely because it was never designed to accommodate parties at all. The system is set up to allow independent candidates to run on their own merit, instead of on the name recognition of their party.

Ballots allow voters to choose up to 10 candidates because it is assumed that, rather than voting 10 times for a single party, voters will choose the 10 individuals they think are most qualified. In practice this just doesn’t happen.

By running a full slate of 10 candidates and by relying on team campaigning–in which the PSF logo is given prominence over the name of the candidate and party objectives are trumpeted on each platform, the PSF conditions students to vote overwhelmingly for the party as opposed to the individual. As a result, little cross-party balloting–whereby one ballot contains votes for a number of parties–occurs.

Because students vote for the entire board on a single ballot, parties potentially require as little as 50 per cent plus 1 vote in order to win 100 per cent of the seats. A grossly disproportionate result.

While in actuality PSF has generally polled considerably higher then 50 per cent, the principle remains the same: they still have 100 per cent of the board while not receiving 100 per cent of the vote.

That means that, for the last two years, anybody who doesn’t feel represented by PSF has been voiceless on the board.

Government bodies without oppositions are deplorable at any level. In a student society with an already hugely apathetic voting population, a system that actively quashes opposition is simply not acceptable. Some kind of immediate reform is desperately needed before this spring’s election.

Gordon Campbell’s answer to electoral reform was the Citizen’s Assembly–what’s yours, Jude Coates?