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But here comes Ford’s landslide in Etobicoke Centre: he won 407 ballots to 64, for 86.4 per cent to Elliott’s 13.6. That didn’t pull him ahead on popular vote, because relatively few ballots were cast in the riding. But it pulled him ahead on points because such a vast majority of the ballots were for him.

Explode that into a 124-riding universe, and you can easily see what happened: Ford won his ridings by a bigger percentage than Elliott won hers, so he got more points. The popular vote was irrelevant — which is why I say it’s a bad question. How did Christine Elliott win the popular vote and the majority of ridings and still lose? The party wasn’t using either of those criteria to decide its next leader!

Some of the consternation, I’m sure, is just frustration at the outcome. But there shouldn’t be any actual confusion about the system, which is fairly elegant and simple. And it certainly shouldn’t impugn the notion of online voting, which presented many fewer problems than some party organizers had feared.

It was human beings who screwed up or hadn’t sufficient time to get it right; by all accounts, the computers did exactly what they were supposed to do with the flawed inputs. By rights, the system should be considered a model for other elections, not a cautionary tale.

Canadians do seem to struggle with these basic concepts, though.

“The Liberals won 39 per cent of the vote and 54 per cent of the seats!” proportional representation fans will shriek, confident you will immediately adopt their outrage as your own. But the nationwide popular vote and seat count were never meant to be linked; it is not an accident when they do not correspond, but rather the product of 338 separate riding elections.