Voter turnout and appropriate representation

[urysohn]

As mentioned in a few other threads on this forum, Rob Brown is currently taking a lot of heat for a memo to Canadian members in a get-out-the-vote drive. While I believe the furor is a bit misdirected and will leave Dr. Brown with an undeserved bad taste after his many years of dedicated service, my question is on the more general idea of initiatives to increase voter participation.

First, I take it as a given that we'd all agree voter participation is relatively low and that, if possible, the SOA has some self-serving obligation to increase that participation.

I believe my question is best described in an oversimplifying example. Suppose the SOA (voting) membership consists of:
50% pension
30% life
20% health
(numbers made up and ignore large portions of membership to simplify)

If the membership votes blindly, elected candidates roughly follow this same breakdown.
If we send out these get-out-the-vote memos highlighting candidates in each particular segment, and the drive works as it is intended to work, what is the natural result? 100% of elected candidates will belong to the largest group, in this example pension actuaries.

So finally, my question for each of the candidates - do you feel this sort of targetted drive will successfully increase the participation by Fellows in the voting process, and if so is it the right type of participation? If not this method, do you have any thoughts on how we can both increase voting participation and ensure a more balanced representation among the VPs and BOGs across various practice areas?

[42]

If we send out these get-out-the-vote memos highlighting candidates in each particular segment, and the drive works as it is intended to work, what is the natural result? 100% of elected candidates will belong to the largest group, in this example pension actuaries.Ury, I didn't follow this. If somebody in Pensions sent the Pension actuaries a list of Pension actuaries to vote for, and somebody in Health sent the Health actuaries a list of Health actuaries to vote for, etc., wouldn't we end up with the same 50/30/20 split that we would have otherwise? I would say that the only difference is that, if these get-out-and-vote memos work the way they are intended to, then the people in each subsection would vote exclusively for the people in their own subsection, but that still means we still get the 50/30/20 split. What am I missing?

[urysohn]

Further assume their are 3 open positions and 3 members from each subgroup running for the offices.
If each subgroup votes exclusively for members in their subgroup, then all of the pension actuaries would get 50% of the vote, all of the life actuaries would get 30% of the vote, etc. So the three candidates with the most votes get elected. But all three of those candidates will come from the largest subgroup - pensions, in this example.

[Gandalf]

urysohn, I agree with your result if everyone votes within their specialty, and with the caveat that there are the same number running from each specialty.

Change it to 6 pension candidates, 3 life candidates, and the pension voters vote randomly for 3 pension candidates, then it is likely that all 3 life candidates would win (though in fact voters even if sticking to pension candidates would not vote randomly, and likely 2 or even 3 pension candidates would win).

[42]

That's right. I was assuming that the distribution of candidates was also 50/30/20. So the result is that any subgroup that is overly represented (i.e., has a greater percentage of the candidates than their percentage in the general actuarial population) would have an advantage to begin with, and that advantage would be accentuated by these get-out-and-vote memos.

[CDesRochers]

With respect to representation, one of the policies that the Board follows is to reserve some seats for candidates from a particular constituency. That is, if one constituencv is under-represented (for example retirement) the Board can "reserve" one or more seats that will go to the highest vote-getter from that area, even if they do not win outright. This cycle, Retirement Syatems has a "reserved" seat.