EQUALIZATION FORMULA KEEPS POTENTIAL LEADERS GUESSING
Member registration another wrinkle in race to command provincial Liberals
Though thousands of members joined the B.C. Liberal party in the run-up to next month’s leadership vote, the newcomers are not likely to have as much of an impact as the near doubling of the rolls would suggest.
The Liberals this week reported about 58,000 members in total, up from almost 34,000 at the outset of the campaign, with several thousands of prospective memberships still to be vetted and approved at party headquarters.
Most of those newcomers were recruited by leadership candidates Dianne Watts and Michael Lee, both relative newcomers themselves. Lee was first elected as an MLA last May. Watts, the former Surrey mayor, joined the party only last year.
Supporters of Watts and Lee have trumpeted the thousands of sign-ups as evidence that each has a good shot at winning when the votes are counted Feb. 3.
But the riding-by-riding breakdown that the party has supplied to the various leadership camps suggests a diminished perspective.
More than half of the new members — about 13,000 out of the more than 24,000 approved to date — came aboard from a mere baker’s dozen worth of the 87 ridings.
Seven were in Surrey: Panorama, Green Timbers, Newton, Fleetwood, Whalley, Cloverdale and South. An eighth was Delta North, just next door. The region, with its politically attuned population of South Asians, provided the bulk of the new memberships in the 2011 contests for the leadership of the B.C. Liberals and NDP.
Three of the home-base ridings for current Liberal leadership candidates were high on the list for new memberships as well: Abbotsford West (Mike de Jong), Vancouver Quilchena (Andrew Wilkinson) and Vancouver-Langara (Lee).
Filling out the list were: Richmond- Queensborough, represented by rookie MLA Jas Johal, who has remained neutral in the leadership race; plus Abbotsford South.
The latter is represented by Darryl Plecas, now sitting as an independent after the Liberals kicked him out for accepting NDP support in becoming Speaker of the legislature.
The riding is next door to de Jong’s, but the surge may also signal preparations for a bid to unseat Plecas when the recall threshold is reached late next year.
Bubbling under the top 13 is Kamloops-South Thompson, home base to leadership hopeful Todd Stone.
The sixth leadership candidate, Sam Sullivan, has so far recruited fewer than 200 new members in his Vancouver-False Creek riding, according to the party numbers. But here’s the key consideration: in order to prevent the outcome from being skewed by a handful of ridings, the Liberals adopted an equalization formula.
Each of the 87 ridings has the same clout in picking the next leader, namely 100 points out of a total of 8,700. The candidate who captures 27 per cent of the votes cast in a given riding, gets 27 points, and so on.
The 13 ridings cited above accounted for more than half of the new members. But however many of them vote, they can only shape the distribution of 1,300 points, about 15 per cent of the total. The other 74 ridings determine the rest.
New members will have a proportionally bigger impact in some ridings than in others. The Surrey ridings already had hundreds of members before the signing began.
The addition of a mere 56 newcomers swelled the Liberal ranks by 60 per cent in Langford-Juan de Fuca, currently represented by Premier John Horgan.
Another factor evident in the information from party headquarters is the looming importance of voter registration. Liberals new and old each have to register with the party to acquire a pin number and actually cast a ballot on the leadership.
As of this week, only about 21,000 party members were actually registered to vote, just over one-third of those eligible.
Participation rates varied from highs of 60 per cent in some ridings, to less than 20 per cent in a handful of others.
The shrewder organizers are concentrating on boosting registrations, particularly in smaller-population ridings where even a few dozen more voters could dramatically boost the point count.
There’s also some behindthe-scenes jockeying over the thousands of memberships that have yet to pass muster with party headquarters. Some camps hope those are rejected for irregularities; others are counting on them to help put their candidate over the top.
The last area of uncertainty involves the ballot itself. The Liberals opted for a preferential ballot, allowing members to number their preferences among the candidates from one through six. (Though they do not need to mark more than one).
If no one wins a majority of the 8,700 points on the first count, the bottom votegetter is dropped, and his or her second choices distributed among the other five. Repeat round by round until someone emerges with 4,351 points or more.
With no one expected to win on the first count and maybe not the second or third round either, those second and third choices loom large. Already the camps are exploring possible trade-offs for support.
One scenario has the three former cabinet ministers — Wilkinson, Stone and de Jong — in line for each other’s second and third choices, while the two outsiders, Lee and Watts should have some crossover support as well. Sullivan, in most analyses, is expected to be out of it on the first count.
Beyond that, nobody knows. With two weeks to go, even the candidates are reduced to guessing.
With no one expected to win on the first count and maybe not the second or third round either, those second and third choices loom large.