Ranked ballot could benefit Ottawa voters
A new and potentially better way to elect city councillors is on the radar in several Canadian cities. It’s time to ask if it would benefit us in Ottawa.
A ranked ballot system, where voters choose their three top preferences, was used in London, Ont., in this year’s municipal election. Voters in Kingston and Cambridge also supported it in a referendum, although that result is not binding. It will likely be under consideration in Toronto, as well.
There are advantages to a ranked ballot. For voters, it means they can cast a more nuanced, more powerful vote. If you want change, rank the two best challengers, one and two. Whichever one proves stronger will benefit from your second-choice vote. If you think one challenger would be best, but the incumbent councillor is better than the rest, vote accordingly.
Voters’ ability to support meaningful second and third choices can also change the dynamics of an election. Rationally, candidates ought to be less likely to attack their opponents when they could be counting on those opponents’ supporters for second-place support.
Under a ranked ballot system, the winner must have more than 50-per-cent support. That’s an important consensus that gives the winner a stronger mandate to act and ends the justified griping about people getting on council with tiny levels of support.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of downside to ranked ballots (although London says the cost of running the election was higher). Voters who don’t want to choose three can just pick the one they want.
In this year’s municipal election, the winners of 15 races for council seats had a majority of the votes, but eight did not, and four of those were races where a ranked ballot would likely have affected the outcome.
The most obvious one is Orléans, where winner Matthew Luloff, garnered just 23.76 per cent of the vote. Catherine Kitts was second at 20.02 per cent. Which one would have been the second choice of the majority of voters? With the system we have, we just don’t know.
The hotly contested race in Capital Ward is another that might well have had a different outcome. Shawn Menard won with 28.12 per cent, but the next two finishers got more than 48 per cent of the vote between them. Veteran Coun. David Chernushenko came third. Would he have been a second choice for many, or were people determined to make a change?
In Alta Vista, Coun. Jean Cloutier was reelected with 32.8 per cent of the vote, a margin of less than two percentage points over challenger Raylene Lang-Dion (31.1). Third-place finisher Kevin Kitt had 22.2-per-cent support. Kitt’s supporters would have decided the race if we had ranked ballots.
Even in Gloucester-South Nepean, people’s second choice could have changed the outcome. Carol Anne Meehan beat councillor Michael Qaqish by less than four per cent of the vote.
Eight members of the new council support ranked voting, according to the voting reform group Ottawa123. Not surprisingly, most council veterans are against it. For them, the ideal election is one in which they face multiple credible opponents, none of whom is overwhelming.
Newcomer Menard says he will raise the issue at council with the hope that ranked ballot voting will be considered here. Even though that system might have hurt his own election chances, Menard still believes it’s a better approach.
It will be interesting to see how councillors and the public react. We aren’t fans of change in Ottawa. Consider, though, that London, my hometown, is even more risk-averse. Maybe they figured they had nothing to lose after their last two mayors were disgraced in office, one due to a fraud conviction, the other a sex scandal.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Ottawa’s method of electing city councillors is fatally flawed. It does have weaknesses, though, weaknesses a ranked ballot system seems likely to address. Let’s see if we are open to change.
Under a ranked ballot system, the winner must have more than 50-per-cent support.