Social Studies 10F‎ > ‎Government‎ > ‎

Voting

You are going to do one of the following imaginary scenarios:
  1. Run a school radio station that places cool Christian music.
  2. Stock a school store with cool (and appropriate comics).
  3. Choose a list of (appropriate) novels that you're going to read for English class.
  4. Decide what technology (Computers, Tablets, Cameras, etc) that the school should buy for next year.
  5. Decide what flavors of juice or other drinks should be sold at the cafe.
  6. Have a poll to decide you are the greatest physicists of all time.
  7. Choose which sports should have official school teams.
  8. Decide what fundraisers the school should do to raise funds for trips, grad, etc.
  9. Decide what new subject should be added to the course offerings next year.
For these scenarios, you'll need to come up with a list of about 20 items. and put at least some of these on a ballot that people will use to vote.

You will need to log in to Google Drive and create a form with your questions. Use your Wingsmail account to do this.

First Past the Post

This is the system Canada uses where the person with the most votes (a plurality of votes) is elected. One person from a region is elected.
  1. Under this scenario, you will have people pick their favorite choice. They may pick only one selection.
  2. When all the votes have been cast, tally them up and the one with the most votes wins.
  3. This will be the first question on your form. 
    • It should be a multiple choice question and the person answering the question should be able to pick only one answer.

Proportional Representation

Proportional Representation (or PR for short) is used in Senate elections in Australia, and in many other countries around the world. It is not currently used in Canada. It tends to have more candidates running than in First Past the Post. It is normally used in areas where more than one person is elected to represent a region.
  1. This will be the second question on your form.
    • It should be a multiple choice question and the person answering the question should be able to pick only one answer.
  2. Ask the same question as above, but since PR tends to attract more candidates, give people a wider range of choices (at least 10).

Single Transferable Vote


You've probably never heard of Single Transferable Vote (or STV for short) but Single Transferable Vote is actually used with the Academy Awards to choose the Oscars, and has been used in the 1950s in both Calgary, Edmonton, Medicine Hat and Winnipeg. 

  1. In this method, voters are asked to make several choices for their vote (5 in our case) and rank their preferences.
  2. To do this, you're going to create 5 Choose from a List style questions.
  3. Each one will have the same list of choices.
  4. The list should have at least 20 choices.

When you're done creating the form


  1. When you're done creating your form, you want at least 25 people to fill out the form in order to get a reasonably varied response. By pressing the blue Send Form button, you should be able to e-mail the entire form (or at least a link) to lots of people. Include a brief explanation of what you're doing.
  2. While you want a minimum of 25 responses by next class, in order to do that you should send your form out to at least twice that number of people.
Inspired by a lesson developed by Fair Vote Canada.
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