Ranked balloting was being considered: mayor

The removal of ranked ballots as an option for municipal elections in Ontario is “very disheartening,” says Mayor Diane Therrien.

“A ranked ballot system can enhance representation and voter choice, and it is unfortunate that the province has shut down this potential,” she wrote in an email on Tuesday.

A ranked ballot system is one that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference — first, second, third, etc.

It’s been an option for municipal elections in Ontario since 2018. Although it’s not been used in Peterborough, Therrien had been interested in exploring the option for the 2022 election — and she said many other municipalities had been considering it as well.

Under a ranked ballot system, a candidate who gets more than 50 per cent plus one of the firstchoice votes wins.

If no one receives enough first-choice votes to win, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from the race.

If your top-choice candidate is eliminated, then your secondchoice candidate moves up to first choice on your ballot.

A recount happens, and the process is repeated until a candidate arrives at the 50-percent-plus-one vote threshold and is declared the winner.

Last week, Premier Doug Ford’s government decided to remove the choice between first-past-the-post elections and ranked ballots.

Ford told Queen’s Park reporters that was because ranked ballots will confuse voters, and that first-past-the-post has “worked well” since 1867 and therefore doesn’t need to be modernized.

But that argument holds no weight for Jeff Leal, the former Liberal MPP and agriculture minister who’d supported ranked ballots for municipalities for the 2018 election.

In an interview Tuesday, Leal said ranked ballots didn’t confuse voters in London, Ont., where the system was successfully used in the 2018 election.

“And just because this is the way we voted back in 1867? Well, back in 1867 the buggy whip industry was important,” Leal said. “Not so much today.”

Peter borough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith, a Progressive Conservative, wasn’t available for comment on Tuesday.

Leal had been a Peterborough city councillor for 18 years before entering provincial politics.

He said ranked ballots are as “a reasonable reform” of the first-past-the-post system because “it allows broad-based consensus.”

When asked whether he will ever run again for municipal office in Peterborough, Leal laughed and says he has no such plans right now — yet he doesn’t rule it out for the future.

“As I tell everybody — I close no doors, right?” Leal said. “I still am a keen observer about what goes on. In my hometown, I’m a keen observer.”