Candidates on both sides of the grain marketing issue hope to use the preferential ballot system to their advantage in the Canadian Wheat Board’s director elections.
The system enables voters to indicate their first choice, second choice and so on, by numerically ranking candidates on the ballot.
If there are candidates they don’t want to support, they can leave the space beside those names blank.
If no candidate gets more than 50 percent on the first count, the last place finisher is dropped from the ballot and his votes are distributed to other candidates based on the preferential rankings.
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That process continues until one candidate exceeds 50 percent.
In four of the five districts holding an election, candidates who agree on the grain marketing issue are joining forces to urge their supporters to vote strategically.
Single desk candidates want their supporters to rank all of the single desk candidates and ignore the open market supporters on the ballot.
Open market candidates are urging their supporters to do the opposite.
Candidates say it’s necessary to remind voters how to use the ballot.
“There is still some confusion about the preferential ballot,” said Paul Beingessner of Truax, Sask., one of three single desk supporters running in District 8.
Curtis Sims of MacGregor, Man., one of three open market supporters running in District 10, agrees.
“It’s a bit of a goofy system and farmers aren’t very familiar with it,” he said, adding that how it’s used can have a significant impact on the election result.
Beingessner said he likes the preferential ballot because it ensures that the winning candidate has more than 50 percent of the votes.
Without it, a candidate could win with 20 or 30 percent of the vote, depending on how many names were on the ballot.
Pro-choice candidates in Districts 4, 8 and 10 have distributed identical mailouts headlined “Important CWB voting instructions for supporters of marketing choice.” It includes a mock ballot marked to support only pro-open market candidates.
Sims said the mailout, the costs of which were shared by the three pro-choice candidates on the ballot, was intended to be “instructional and educational.”
Bill Toews, a single desk candidate in District 10, said his concern about the mailout is that the phrase “CWB voting instructions” could be misinterpreted as an official directive from the CWB.
Toews, who jokes that he’s the target of a “Kill Bill” campaign, says he’s not sure how farmers will react to the mailout.
“I think there’s been a bit of a negative reaction to it,” he said. “Farmers are fair-play kind of guys and some think this goes over the line.”
In District 8, single desk candidates Beingessner, Rod Flaman and Lonny McKague have sent out a brochure urging single desk supporters to rank all three on the ballot and leave “anti-CWB” candidates off.
Beingessner said the joint mailout was a response to a similar brochure from open market candidate David Schnell.
There are differing views as to whether having several like-minded candidates on the ballot is a benefit.
Some say having several, say, open market candidates on the ballot will bring out more open market voters, and adding each candidate’s supporters together increases the chances of winning.
Others say having just one candidate representing, say, the single desk side will enable that candidate to get all those votes and possibly win on the first ballot.
Also, previous elections have shown that it’s not always predictable where the votes of a candidate who has been dropped off the ballot will go as a second or third choice.
Bill Woods, a lone single desker running against two open market supporters in District 4, says he thinks he will have to win a majority on the first ballot.
“I think it might have helped me if there was another single desk guy running from a different part of district to bring out more local voters,” he said.
