Local group calls for randomized ballot order in Vernon’s 2022 municipal election

Oct 21, 2021 | 5:45 AM

A representative for an informal group of local voters is urging Vernon council to amend a bylaw that would see the names of candidates in the 2022 municipal election randomized on ballots.

Susan Young, who is also affiliated with Fair Elections North Okanagan and Fair Elections Canada, wants to see council direct staff at their next meeting to move from an alphabetized order to a randomized order.

Young told Vernon Matters that while she is not going to have her name on the ballot in the upcoming election, she does want to see a system put in place to remove people’s preconceived or actual biases in relation to the names on a ballot, adding that the order, particularly when there is no party affiliation, plays a key role in elections.

“Most people might think that order is an issue, [and] there are numerous studies that indicate that indeed it is a problem. So it’s not just anecdotal, we know that research shows that there is indeed an alphabetical order bias,” said Young.

She specifically points to the report ‘Ballot Order in Cueless Elections: A Comparison of Municipal and Provincial Elections in Québec,’ which was published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science in 2018. It showed that candidates in Quebec’s municipal elections in 2007 and in 2013 who’s names were further down in the alphabetical list received significantly fewer votes than those near the top. These results did not account for party affiliation biases, which presented themselves in the provincial election, as municipal candidates are not associated with parties.

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One of the authors of the report, Alexandre Blanchet, told Vernon Matters that randomization does not completely remove peoples’ biases, as each ballot would still have to order the names somehow, meaning some people would be further down the list on some ballots.

“What randomization would do is to ‘spread’ these individual biases equally across all candidates instead of concentrating everything on some unlucky candidates, effectively making things a bit more fair for everybody,” said Blanchet in the email, noting that randomization would have to be applied to each individual ballot rather than just printing one order of randomized names on all ballots.

Young said there is also precedence to move towards a randomized ballot order in British Columbia.

“Vancouver moved to a randomized ballot in 2018. They did a review after that election and will be going forward with a randomized ballot in 2022,” said Young.

“Also communities like White Rock, Dawson Creek and Fort St. John also use randomized ballots, so it’s nothing new here.”

Young is also encouraging voters to do more research on their own, particularly when it comes to elections where there is little to no name recognition and no party affiliation, so they can find the candidates that best represent their values.

The motion will be put before Vernon council at the Oct. 25 meeting, where it will be decided whether or not to have administration investigate the option of a randomized ballot and bring it back for consideration at a future council meeting.

by Liam Verster

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