"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 18 January 2013

Politics 2

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Promises Made to Be Broken.":

To 7:45pm.....

Evelyn Buck (elected) 5,322 7.20%

No - she represents 7% of us.
**********
Silly Billy...that's not how it works at all. 
Council is the sum of its parts. 
Aurora Council is nine parts. A Mayor and eight Councillors. 
Each member has a single vote. No more, no less .
Even the Mayor can vote only once. 
The  Municipal Act defines the Mayor's role as providing "leadership and guidance". 
It  gives the Mayor more influence. Providing skills, experience and willingness to provide leadership and guidance are present.
Otherwise not. Nil, Nada, Nothing. Zilch and Zero.
Especially, without  understanding the importance of trust.
 

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Posted by Evelyn Buck at 12:30

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The original commenter makes the mistake in using the Town's statistics for the % of votes from the total possible votes.

This makes sense if you look at the Mayor's position since each voter casts only 1 vote. So for example, for the Mayor's position there were 5 candidates, and 13,169 votes cast (1 per voter). Dawe received 7,254 votes out of this total or 55%.

But for the 8 Councilor positions there were 18 candidates and a total of 73,849 votes. Why, so many votes... because each voter has a maximum of 8 votes to cast but only 1 vote can be cast per candidate. Not all voters may have cast all their votes since if you divide the total votes of 73,849 by 8 you only get 9231.125 not a whole number of voters and much less than the number of voters who voted for the Mayor's position. The only plausible reason that I can come up with is that not every voter cast all their 8 votes. The % of the total doesn't make any real sense as a stat.

If someone is looking for a stat Evelyn was the 3rd most popular candidate elected! Trying to manipulate other interpretations from the numbers in my opinion don't hold water. In the end, you're either elected or you are not. And once elected all councilors have the vote on council including the Mayor.

P.S. It's a bit scary that this has to be explained to the commenter. Are they a voter in Aurora? I hope not otherwise they don't understand the system they are voting in.

18 January 2013 at 16:30

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