Columnists
Ditching the Ranked Ballot
Let’s get right to the big news. Doug Ford and his Ontario Conservative crew are planning to repeal paragraph 3 of subsection 7(3). I know; it’s a shocker.
That would be the paragraph and subsection of the Municipal Elections Act that allows a Municipality to hold an election using the ranked ballot system of voting. It was enacted in 2016; London used in the 2018 election. Toronto was considering it for next time.
The ranked ballot system is way to get a majority of voters behind a candidate. Where there are only two candidates in a race, ranking won’t apply because one of them will necessarily enjoy a majority on the first ballot. Where there are three or more candidates, it is possible that no one will attain a majority on the first ballot.
B and C. C receives the fewest votes the first time around, so voters who plump for C have their alternative preference for A or B examined, and the votes are reassigned accordingly. One of A or B will then have a majority —but it could the one who comes in second in the first round. Both A and B therefore have a strong incentive to make nice to C’s voters, because it’s about who finishes first on the last ballot—not, according to the traditional ‘first past the post’ rule, who gets the most votes on the first ballot.
Democracy advocate Dave Meslin—who spoke in Picton to a meeting sponsored by the Prince Edward County library a couple of years ago, and who is the author of Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up—notes that in a traditional first past the post scheme, candidates A and C would tend to put pressure on one another to drop out so as not to split the anti-B vote on the first and only ballot. With the ranked ballot system, A and C are both encouraged to run, because votes assigned to C won’t necessarily diminish A’s chances of ultimate success. He says this is good for democracy.
Where there are a large number of candidates for a position, ranked ballots make even more sense. They tend to work against candidates who would otherwise win because they have secured a minority and a consensus hasn’t yet formed around another candidate. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would have welcomed the ranked ballot during their quest for the 2016 Republican nomination. So would the rest of us. Ranked ballots are thought to be especially appropriate for municipal politics, in which candidates tend to run as individuals. Once you introduce political parties into the mix, you start to involve complicating questions of proportional representation.
Speaking of what is good for democracy, the Ford government’s unilateral decision to remove the ranked ballot doesn’t smell fragrant, There was no public input before the Bill was introduced. The existing legislation leaves the choice of ballot method to individual municipalities, so it can’t be said that ranked balloting was being forced down anyone’s throat.
The Bill is also one of those ‘throw everything into the pot’ bills for which governments are often criticized. Its formal title is the prosaic “An Act to enact the Supporting Ontario’s Recovery Act, 2020 respecting certain proceedings relating to the coronavirus (COVID-19), to amend the Municipal Elections Act 1996 and to revoke a regulation.” In introducing the Bill (Bill 218) for first reading in the legislature, Attorney General Doug Downey didn’t make any reference at all to the ranked voting part, which appears to be grafted on to a Bill the main intent of which is to extend legal protection to COVID volunteers. What’s next: a bill that regulates Ontario’s hairdressers topped with a provision that changes the prescribed shape of ballot boxes?
Premier Doug Ford is quoted as saying “We don’t need any more complications on ranked ballots and we’re just gonna do the same way as we’ve been doing since 1867—first past the post.” Thanks for deciding that for us, Mr. Ford. Never mind the thoughtful debate.
This is not the first time the Ford government has laid down the law to municipalities rather than consulting them. Two years ago, it cut the number of seats on Toronto City council by almost half. The action was set aside by a lower court, but upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal; it is now on the docket of the Supreme Court of Canada.
It would be a shame for the Ontario government to throw away some of the goodwill it has gained across the province for its handlIng of the COVID crisis, and in Prince Edward County for its announcement of funds for the design of the new Memorial Hospital to the tune of $8.7 million.
I guess they must know what they are doing, I don’t.
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