WHAT'S IN A NAME?
According to the City of North Vancouver, your moniker could contain an electoral advantage if it starts with the first six letters of the alphabet.
In one of its more light-hearted moments, city council voted 4-0 June 25 to abandon an alphabetically ordered ballot in November's municipal election and move to a randomly ordered one.
As Coun. Craig Keating's motion was read out, Coun. Rod Clark surprised his colleagues by walking out of chambers.
"Your worship, I must rise on a conflict of interest," he said as he left. "My name is Clark; it starts with a C; it's the third letter of the alphabet and therefore I have a conflict."
All eyes then turned to a startled Coun. Pam Bookham.
"I have so many things I wanted to say," she protested. "But I think in this case I have to (leave) because I can count votes as well as anyone. So, for the same reason, I'll be declaring a conflict of interest."
Coun. Bob Fearnley was absent from the meeting.
"Well, there goes the opposition," remarked Mayor Darrell Mussatto.
"The reason I brought this forward is because I did note the result of the last election," said Keating. "I did see that bloc, except for Coun. (Mary) Trentadue, whose name is exceptionally long - we need to have something for short names too. But I looked into it a bit further and a variety of academic studies have shown that in a low-turnout election there is a decisive advantage from where you are placed on the ballot."
Keating provided copies of these studies, which said top-of-ballot names could have as much as a five-percentage-point advantage. Keating told council that randomly ordered ballots are a constitutional requirement in California.
"I thought we could take alphabetalism out of the election process," he said.
Coun. Guy Heywood said even more statistical bias could be removed by individually randomizing each ballot, an idea which the city clerk said was technically feasible but not allowed under provincial election laws.
"I was really eager to hear what the Bs and Cs were going to say tonight," Trentadue said, "but unfortunately we're not going to get that. . . . It may or may not have an impact on the result, but I think if it's useful and makes for a wider-open playing field, we should do it."
Bookham did manage to get her remarks heard during a subsequent agenda item.
"I'm very pleased to see this concern with fairness, a level playing field, and ensuring that every candidate has an equal opportunity to be chosen by the voters," she said.
"I look forward to a motion from another councillor suggesting that we ought to forgo the kind of campaign finance donations that we saw play such a big role in our election last time."
Bookham said the mayor and his allies had raised more than $80,000 for the 2008 election, in which Mussatto ran unopposed.
"That left that money to be divided between four candidates - that's more than $20,000 per candidate," she said. "I know there are many candidates who might think about running, but if they have to spend $20,000 to have a fair opportunity they might be a little discouraged. So I look forward to a follow-up motion from those who see that fairness is definitely at the heart of democracy."
