Yesterday I participated in a conference call the government set up to explain the workings of the proposed Senate reform legislation.

Most of it was pretty basic: voters will have a chance to vote in a plebiscite; elections will be administered by Elections Canada; standard spending limits in place, etc.

But when it came time to explain how candidates would win I was completely stumped.

Apparently it’s not just going to be a “first past the post” system but instead it will be STV — Single Transferable Vote.

Now it has something to do with something called “quotients”, but that’s all I got out of it.

Seems to me the only people who will understand the voting system will be physicists.