Geoff Corfield
Geoffrey Corfield has been active in Conservative politics in Canada since 1976, both federally and provincially. But he won’t always write about politics because he has more experience with writing history and humour. He lives in London, Ontario, frequents used book shops, swims lengths, drinks beer, plays croquet, has his own town in north-central Queensland and six books published, and would very much like to find a publisher for this New Zealand book and its companion one for Australia.
Erin O’Toole won the Canadian Conservative Party leadership election over the favourite Peter MacKay by 57%-43% (points system), and 59%-41% (popular vote). So remember the name O’Toole, and hopefully, Canada’s next prime minister will have an Irish name and not a French one.
The voting was by mail-in ranked ballot in an equal-points-per-riding
system. You ranked the four candidates 1-4. The bottom candidate on
each round then went off the ballot, with the second/third place
choices being distributed accordingly until one candidate got more
than 50%. Candidates won points for winning ridings. Winning a riding
with 50 total votes cast therefore being equal to winning one with 500
total votes cast.
O’Toole won by polishing up his French, winning Quebec (78 ridings),
and getting the majority of the third/fourth placed candidate’s votes.
I voted Leslyn Lewis first, O’Toole second and MacKay fourth; because
I wanted to see what Lewis could do and encourage her, while ensuring
that if it was a MacKay-O’Toole runoff that my vote went to O’Toole.
It all worked well.
Lewis finished third overall (30%), but after Round 2 she was leading
in popular vote (Lewis 60,316; O’Toole 59,907; MacKay 54,165), and was
in first place in all four western provinces and second in Ontario.
She actually won the rural province of Saskatchewan (14 ridings), a
quite astonishing feat for a completely unknown commercial lawyer with
a PhD from the big city of Toronto.
Count the votes. Canada’s next prime minister could have been chosen by 174,386 people out of a population of 37 million.
During the last week before the deadline for ballots to be received
(too late for post office), I volunteered to help the Lewis Campaign
by trying to get votes in from a list of identified Lewis supporters
in my riding who hadn’t yet voted. I was curious to see how many there
were. There were 14. I managed to get two votes couriered to Ottawa
and missed a third who dilly-dallied too long.
The biggest stumbling block to voting appeared to be photocopying a
piece of identification, and putting a postage stamp on the envelope.
You filled out the ballot and sealed it in an envelope, then put that
envelope in another envelope along with a signed Declaration Form and
the photocopied identification.
The votes were counted by a machine that also opened the envelopes.
Unfortunately it got carried away and mangled some which then had to
be rescued and manually replicated. The Luddites revenge!
The Conservatives now have a more dynamic, no nonsense leader. We
needed that. But will the defeated Peter MacKay now come back into
politics? And what role will Leslyn Lewis now have? I suggested to her
and her campaign manager that she should choose a Toronto riding, work
to win the nomination, then help other Toronto ridings. The
Conservatives hold 0 of 25 ridings in Toronto. She must become Miss
Toronto Conservative and change that.
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