The provincial government announced Tuesday that they plan to revoke the power granted to Ontario municipalities to hold ranked ballot votes for municipal elections.
In a press release issued Tuesday afternoon, the province said that it would move to amend the Municipal Elections Act to making voting “consistent” across federal, provincial and municipal elections.
Advocates for ranked ballot voting have long argued that it better represents the will of the electorate compared to the “first past the post” system traditionally used in Canadian elections and helps make the system more equitable and inclusive.
Ranked ballots allows a voter to list their candidates in order of preference. Candidates who receive the fewest votes as the top pick are dropped following the first round of counting and the vote of anyone who selected those candidates as their top pick is then transferred to their second pick and so on until a winner emerges.
In the “first past the post system,” the candidate who wins the greatest number of votes is the winner. The system means that candidates who least represent the will of most voters are sometimes elected because parties with similar ideologies split the vote. Proponents of the “first past the post” system argue that it is simpler to understand and prevents fringe candidates, some of whom might have radical ideas, from getting elected.
Following years of lobbying, the government of former premier Kathleen Wynne amended the Municipal Elections Act to allow municipalities to decide for themselves whether they wanted to adopt the voting system. The 2018 municipal elections were the first time that municipalities were able to use ranked balloting. While it was not widely adopted, it was used for the first time in London, Ont.
Toronto was working toward the possibility of a ranked ballot election in 2022. However
a report last month by the city clerk advised that the COVID-19 pandemic had made much of the preparatory work impossible and suggested 2026 as a more realistic target.
The move to scrap ranked ballot elections was announced as part of the “Supporting Ontario's Recovery Act,” new
legislation meant to shield essential workers from additional liability associated with health measures around the pandemic.
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