EDITORIAL – The myth of ‘splitting the vote’ in municipal elections
(Image: Mel Rothenburger)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
TALK OF VOTE-SPLITTING is ramping up with the next civic election a year away. It’s all a lot of nonsense.
The theory simply doesn’t hold up because it makes false assumptions. It assumes there are only two options in elections — our candidate or the other candidate.
But people vote for candidates based on any number of reasons: because they like his or her stand on the economy, or on crime, or on social issues, or filling potholes or building new amenities, or they think the person is good looking, or not.
This is particularly true in local elections where party politics play little or no role. In provincial or federal politics, strategic voting sometimes comes into it. For example, you might not want a rightwing party to win so vote for a leftwing candidate even if you think that candidate isn’t the best choice.
But in municipal elections, candidates are judged on themselves, on their credentials and their promises and proposals for policies. Such things differ from one to another.
The vote-splitting theory is often claimed to have happened in the 2022 Kamloops civic election. It says Reid Hamer-Jackson “came up the middle” because too many incumbent councillors ran for mayor.
“Coming up the middle” may be a thing in baseball but it certainly wasn’t in the civic election. There would have had to be candidates clearly identified as being on the left and others clearly seen as being on the right, with Hamer-Jackson being in the centre. That wasn’t the case, and it certainly had nothing to do with the ballot box.
Three incumbent councillors were in the race — Dieter Dudy, Sadie Hunter and Arjun Singh plus a one-term former councillor in Ray Dhaliwal. Vote-splitting believers claim the other four divided up the “incumbent” vote, allowing Hamer-Jackson to win.
Say what? So everybody who went to the polls decided they were going to vote based on whether a candidate was an incumbent or a newcomer, and if they voted on the incumbent side they then divided their votes up among them?
Besides, they say, Hamer-Jackson didn’t win a majority. He got only 31.43 per cent of the slightly more than 30 per cent of votes. Fact is, very few candidates ever receive a clear majority. Fact is, there’s usually a poor turnout for municipal elections but our democratic system says those elections are decided by the people who take the trouble to vote, not by those who don’t.
So, Hamer-Jackson beat all the rest, and it wasn’t even very close. Kamloops got the mayor (and, by the way, the council) it asked for, for better or worse.
If you believe there’s such a thing as vote splitting, you should think about this: a large slate can just as easily take votes away from somebody else’s favorite candidate and give them to your favourite candidate as the other way around, could it not?
Those who talk about vote splitting are trying to instill fear into elections. They want electors to vote against candidates rather than for them. They promote the notion not just of strategic voting but of strategic candidacy. The latter says, if you run for election, you might take votes away from the person I think should win.
That’s a rather bizarre way to view democracy. No, people will vote for the candidate that suits them no matter what you say or what you might like or don’t like. That candidate may be an incumbent councillor, an incumbent mayor, a former councillor or someone who hasn’t previously served in public office.
It’s got nothing to do with splitting votes. And that’s the way it should be.
Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Ray ran on the same issues as Reid and should have gotten all the votes for change if that’s the only reason Reid won. Maybe there was more to it after all…
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The mayor won by 7% (31.61% to 24.47%) that made it the 6th closest city race in the province. Moreover, the past election spreads were:
So yes 7% was a very close race whether comparison to the province as a whole or specifically to our city’s past elections. With the 3 councillors running as status quo candidates and RHJ as the outsider it’s inconceivable that he, RJH, would have won if any of the 3 councillors hadn’t sought election as most certainly these votes wouldn’t have shifted from the status quo to an outsider, to which the mayor has all but admitted to in the past.
It is true the mayor didn’t come up the middle, he came up the outside and won fairly. Vote splitting is nothing more than a semantic discussion at this point. His victory was due to 1/3 of the voters were desperate for something else.
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You have no evidence of how the votes would be allocated if only one mayoral candidate opposed RHJ. Your assertion is speculative based on belief, not data.
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I think the big issue influencing the outcome of the 2022 election was that one candidate represented change while the other four were “maintain the status quo.” Definite polarization, and yes, four candidates shared the “business as usual” vote.
People voted for change, but sadly the “status quo” councillors elected were opposed.
And now here we are, with more wet shelters than ever, one of the highest crime rates in Canada, and still needing (at a minimum) an audit of social services and city real estate deals.
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Wrong!! If Arjun and Sadie had not run we would have had Dieter for Mayor and not what we have now
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This seems to be what the councillors thought and why they have openly opposed everything the duly elected mayor has tried to do. They wanted Dieter. They didn’t get him. Cue a four-year tantrum.
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I think the argument is more nuanced, in that vote splitting in municipal elections can still happen outside of situations in which there are no “party politics” or slates of candidates.
Vote splitting can happen when there are two or more “similar” candidates and one “dissimilar” candidate.
For example, see the article “What is Vote Splitting” at https://electionscience.org/education/vote-splitting
In the case of the 2022 Kamloops civic election, one could argue that three candidates were “similar” in some ways (not just as incumbents, but in approach and philosophy) and one candidate was “dissimilar” (if one concludes that RHJ had a very “dissimilar” approach to the other three).
Regardless, one would need to conduct research and gather evidence by collecting data from voters participating in the 2022 Kamloops civic election to effectively determine whether or not vote splitting as defined was in play or not, allowing RHJ to be elected over the other three candidates.
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If a slate is organized covertly, it could influence voter turnout or candidate success in ways the article doesn’t consider, consequently civic elections don’t represent purely individual voter preferences. If slates are formed secretly, this could distort the democratic process by presenting candidates as independent when they are not, potentially misleading voters and undermines this article’s conclusion that the last election was transparent, merit-based candidate selection.
In the past we have had many slates (party line climbers into provincial politics where Nepotism is rampant) some held, some fell apart. We have them active now preparing for the next election. Candidates may secretly coordinate as a group despite appearing independent, influencing both the election and subsequent council decisions.
This undermines the democratic process by presenting a façade of individual candidacy while fostering bloc voting post-election, potentially leading to the governance issues seen since the 2022 election, where council dysfunction has been prominent.
The editor dismisses vote-splitting as a flawed concept, arguing that voters choose candidates based on individual merits. However, the edit overlooks the possibility of covert slates, which could manipulate voter perceptions and create the kind of coordinated voting where elections do not reflect purely independent choices.
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