What can we learn from an election night? Two lessons.
First, know your ABCs. Vancouver's 2011 civic election was all about civic parties (more on that in a moment) but it was also about the alphabet. Alphabetic voting, as it's known, is the controversial notion that voters presented with a long list of candidates will blindly pick the first names on an alphabetically ordered voting ballot. When Vision Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»and COPE took council in 2008, only one NPA candidate got a seat on council: Suzanne Anton. This time, Vision won everything save for two seats that went to the NPA's George Affleck and Elizabeth Ball and one to Adriane Carr of the Greens. A-B-C.
Taking nothing away from their worthiness as candidates, Affleck is a rookie who had no public profile going into the campaign, while Ball, a councillor from 2005 to 2008, is best known for having suffered past multiple head injuries. Carr had never won an election anywhere in anything in seven previous tries. Meanwhile, high-profile NPA candidates like Mike Klassen, who did everything but punch out a side of beef and jog up city hall's steps in his run for council, were left on the outside looking in.
The full effect of alphabetic voting is controversial among academics, and Saturday's results are no different. If it was at play, it did not help Joe Carangi of the NPA or R.J. Aquino of COPE or even independent Kelly Alm, unless they got more votes because of it than they otherwise would have. COPE's Ellen Woodsworth, who was knocked out Saturday, was elected in 2002 and 2008. Not bad for a W.
But while we can debate what's also known as "donkey voting," many voters clearly had little idea about the nearly 100 candidates presented to them at the ballot box. No wonder the voter turnout was slightly higher this year but still dismal at 34 per cent. A possible solution is wards, which would dramatically cut down on the number of candidates voters need to consider because they would be voting in localized precincts for a single councillor.
Unfortunately, no one wants to talk about a ward system in Vancouver. Past referendums to bring it in have failed. The party that lost Saturday, the NPA, has historically been against wards, while the party that won, Vision, has members in favour of wards but is in no hurry to change a system that has given it a dominant grip on Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»politics. The system is corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic-unless it puts you in power. Then it's great.
That leads to the second lesson: know the machine. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»is a Vision town now, and it's remarkable how completely it has edged out both right and left to occupy the politically and materially profitable centre. Its total success Saturday has rendered the NPA into a party of old people and golfers. It's made COPE, the historic defender of the city's working class, seem as relevant as stubby beer bottles.
Vision will be in power for a long time. It has tons of money from both developers and unions. Its backroom organizers are smart and bare knuckled. It has the energetic support of the young and upwardly mobile. Its spokesperson, Mayor Gregor Robertson, is nice, handsome, popular and never loses his cool. All Vision has to do is keep him away from live microphones during breaks at public meetings.
Vision is a generally progressive outfit, and as a generally progressive voter, I'm not unhappy. I cycle and eat chickens and think urban wheat fields, while merely symbolic, are kind of cool. I want Insite to succeed and believe, in balance, that the city, after stupidly encouraging Occupy Vancouver, handled the protests well by not using teargas.
But Vision is also a machine and behaves like one. It's gagged staff at city hall and made our jobs of informing readers much more difficult. And money, particularly from developers, is the machine's fuel. Vision knows who pays the bills.
That makes me wonder how Vision will handle the pressing issue of the next decade: affordability. The city is ridiculously expensive, in no small part thanks to developers, and if it gets worse, it's going to turn me into a commie.
I'm not alone in Vancouver-an anxious social moderate with a moderate paycheque in a city with immoderate prices. What is the Vision machine going to do for us? Can we trust a machine? I'm not sure yet.
