UNA Election & the local area rule: Wards with out wards.

 The ongoing UNA election is a 'first past the post-but' system.  And the 'but' is important to realize when casting your votes if a voter wants each vote to count.

Under by-law 5.14 the number of Directors from each 'local area'

is limited to three. The local areas, as defined in the by-laws are:

• Chancellor Place
• East Campus
• Hawthorn Place
• Hampton Place
• Westbrook Place

It is unclear as to whether or not the 'central district buildings' constitute a 'local area' or not under the UNA by-laws (but as there are no candidates from that 'area' this election we can ignore it for the moment).

In plain language, this by-law restricts the number of local area candidates to three no matter what the vote. 

In this election we have 7 candidates from Wesbrook Place (Cheng, Co, Gallo, Gan, Glassheim, Kang, Liu). It will be a waste of your vote to select more than three of these candidates. Even if these seven scored the top votes, given there are enough candidates from two other local areas to fill the remaining four positions, only three from Wesbrook can be elected. 

We have four candidates from Hawthorn Place (Watson, Mojdehi, Prost, McCutcheon). Again, at most three of these candidates can be successful.

We have two candidates from Hampton Place (Holmes, Ngieng). Both of these could get elected if they ranked at least ranked at least 5th or 6th overall. But, even if they ranked 8th and 9th overall one of them would get elected under the provisions of by-law 5.14. 

What we have is a ward-like system (just like with have a 'municipal-like' governance entity) for selecting successful candidates, but an at large voting system. 

So when it comes to voting, to ensure that each of your votes are used to a maximum utility I would advise that you select no more than three candidates from each local area.  I will be voting for three from Westbrook, three from Hawthorn, and one from Hampton. 

A person interested in 'plumping' their ballot (to provide an advantage to one candidate by not using all their votes) might choose to vote for only one candidate in each local area this would in some sense be like giving an extra vote to a candidate of one's preference.  

However one decides to vote I would strongly advise neighbours not to waste their ballots by only voting for candidates from a single local area.