One Ontario city modernizes voting process for the fall election
Municipalities have the option of a ranked ballot system
Three years ago, I wrote in this space about a new option being made available to Peterborough city council for determining how the winning candidate is chosen in a municipal election. The current system – sometimes called first past the post – is straightforward enough: voters have one vote and the candidate with the most number of votes wins.
The new alternative – known as ranked or preferential balloting – would allow voters to rank all the candidates for councillor or mayor in order of their preference instead of voting for just a single candidate. The votes are counted and if no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. The votes would be counted again and the second-place choices of those who voted for the eliminated candidate are distributed and counted until one candidate wins at least 50 per cent of the votes.
At the time, Queen’s Park had just announced that Ontario’s municipalities had the choice of adopting ranked balloting for councillors – but not school board trustees – beginning with the 2018 election this fall. Peterborough city council stayed within its comfort zone and had no substantive consultation or debate on the matter. The city council in London, however, following a two and a half hour debate, adopted ranked balloting by a vote of 9 to 5 in May 2017, becoming the first Canadian city to do so.
The essential problem with the current system is that winning candidates may not represent the wishes of a majority of voters, which is a challenge to the democratic ideal of majority rule. In Peterborough’s 2014 election, not one winning candidate for mayor or city councillor received more than 50 per cent of the votes. In Ashburnham ward, for example, neither of the two elected candidates received more than 29 per cent of the vote. In effect, city council earned the support of a minority of the voters.
In addition, voters who feel that their preferred candidate has no chance of winning may give up and not vote, exacerbating an already low voter turnout problem. People will sometimes vote against a candidate to strategically prevent him or her from winning, rather than for a candidate who might otherwise be their preferred choice. The current system invites candidates to attack their opponents, because a negative campaign designed to suppress another candidate’s vote could boost their own.
A first-time system of ranked ballots will increase the cost of running the election and it may mean slower election results. However, it carries the substantial democratic benefit of electing councillors who actually have the majority support of the voters. Voters who didn’t vote in the past because they assumed that their preferred choice couldn’t win will be more likely to vote because their vote now matters. That increases voter turnout.
Candidates will be less critical of their competitors because they will likely need their second and third votes to win. That will mean that they will focus more on issues than personalities, which will improve the civility of campaigns. Strategic voting – in which votes are cast to weaken one candidate rather than support another candidate – will be reduced dramatically. That is good for strengthening public trust in the electoral process. Knowing that the votes they receive will have an impact on the outcome, more candidates are likely to come forward. The city of London has 78 candidates for mayor and councillor this year and that’s good for democracy.
London deserves credit for its willingness to innovate. Hopefully, the city of Peterborough will be watching with an eye to the next municipal election in 2022.