From today's Star:
The [Provincial Conservative Leadership] race will be decided using a one-member-one-vote system with Tories casting preferential ballots in all 107 Ontario ridings on June 21 and June 25.
Ballot boxes will be sealed and opened in Markham on June 27. Riding association presidents from the 107 constituencies will then read aloud the tabulated results in a move designed to give the event the excitement of a U.S. presidential nominating convention. "We want to be able to present the party in a way the public can tune in on TV or on a special website," said Zeise.
[...]
This is interesting in an academic, political junkie kind of way. Besides 'generating excitement', this will also create an interesting data set that will show the geographic breakdown of each candidate's support. From an academic perspective, it might then be interesting to map that against donations and so forth.
It's also an interesting experiment in openness. Does anyone think this would be a good idea on our side of the floor? What if there was an a breakdown from our convention how our leadership candidates did in each riding? Or a detailed breakdown of the union vs. membersip vote? (And speaking of openness, how much of that for the NDP leadership race will be publicly released? After some quick looking around, there is no detailed breakdown online at the ONDP website.)
I also wonder how this "reading aloud the tabulated results" will work if the convention goes to a second ballot. Or are they just counting on one, now that Mike Harris is busily putting all the ducks in a row?
Is there much precedent for what the PC's are doing in a leadership context before? From the viewpoint of a detached observer, it looks like an interesting experiment.
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