Council debate on ranked balloting was a farce

Delayed report, unaccounted timeline, and already answered question part of tale

Whether you believe ranked balloting is the cat’s meow or for the birds, city hall’s handling of the voting option was a complete farce.

Councillors voted 9-5 against a supportive motion by Coun. Matthew Green, which everyone interprets to mean Hamilton will continue to use the current electoral system of voting for one candidate instead of ranking three or more in order of preference.

But the ludicrous thing about the debate was the timing of the staff report, prepared by elections manager Tony Fallis, that prompted it.

Fallis claimed that if councillors wanted to switch to ranked balloting in time for the 2018 election, they would have to get on it ASAP.

According to Fallis, in order to have everything planned — including provincially mandated public meetings and a bylaw passed by May of next year — “we at the clerk’s office would need it done by the end of the year.”

Amazingly, not a single councillor asked Fallis to detail what exactly that means and why, having finally received a long-delayed report, did they suddenly need to act tout de suite.

The Spartan timeline given by Fallis was even more bizarre when you consider there are only two council meetings left before the end of the year.

A rightly frustrated Green said he was “very disappointed” that a report that had been requested months ago was only delivered as the clock was running down.

But, again, nobody questioned Fallis’s explanation that the report hadn’t landed earlier because the province hadn’t passed regulations spelling out how ranked balloting would work. In other words, blame the provincial government, not staff.

Trouble is, the provincial bill giving municipalities the option to use ranked balloting became legislation on June 7 of this year. That’s five months ago.

Additionally, council formally directed staff to report on the amendments to the Municipal Elections Act on April 13 of this year. That’s seven months ago.

Taken together, it’s far from clear why an information report which allegedly requires immediate action was so long in the making.

To be fair, when councillors first asked for the report, they directed staff to deliver it by Dec. 7, 2016. At the very most that means staff was equal to council’s lackadaisical deadline, if not the spirit of democratic reform.

Briefly, those in favour of ranked balloting claimed it will, among other things, increase voter turnout. Those against argued it will create confusion.

But both camps were upset that the province didn’t extend the option to the election of school board trustees. That means if Hamilton did opt for change, the electorate might be bewildered by dealing with two different voting systems.

When asked, Fallis said he didn’t know why trustee elections weren’t included. “It’s never been explained to myself and I know in our meeting with other election officials no one has been able to come up with a reason for it. I know on several occasions we did ask the province — our representatives — and they were to get back to me and haven’t at this time.”

That’s very odd because I asked the same question of former Municipal Affairs Minister Ted McMeekin’s staff way back in July, 2015. I was told school boards were excluded because school boundaries often cut across multiple municipalities. Interestingly, Fallis was interviewed in the same column.

One more point before closing the curtain on this bureaucratic burlesque show.

When asked by Jason Farr if it was still doable to switch to ranked balloting given the stated timelines, Fallis said it was. Then he added:

“Not that it comes into it, I’m not going to be here for two months. I’m having surgery. So that’s going to be one of the problems.”

So we have a needlessly delayed report, an unaccounted for timeline, an ongoing question that’s already been answered, and a city elections manager about to be hors de combat.

Did I call this thing a farce? Maybe travesty is the better word.