Will Toronto actually adopt ranked-ballot voting?
THE IDEA
Last week, mayor John Tory announced his support for ranked balloting, an alternative to the city’s first-past-the-post electoral system. Under a ranked balloting system, voters choose their first, second and third picks for a particular political office. If no candidate captures a majority of the first-choice votes, election officials start counting second- and third-choice votes until someone emerges with a clear majority. (The exact process is hard to describe, but here’s an explanatory video.) Proponents argue the system eliminates vote splitting, reduces strategic voting and prevents candidates from dropping out just because they’re behind in the polls.
WOULD IT WORK?
Cities like San Francisco and London, England, already use ranked ballots. Toronto city council expressed its interest in adopting the system back in the summer of 2013, when councillors voted to ask the province to amend the Municipal Elections Act to “authorize the use and establish the framework of Ranked Choice Voting.”
Requesting that Queen’s Park do something is, of course, very different from Queen’s Park actually doing it. But the signs are promising: premier Kathleen Wynne has already commanded her municipal affairs and housing minister to make the changes necessary to allow cities to use ranked ballots. Given Wynne’s unambiguous support and majority government, Queen’s Park will likely grant Toronto’s request.
If it does, the question will return to city council for another vote. Five of the 15 councillors who opposed ranked balloting in 2013 are no longer on council, while only two of 26 supporting councillors are gone. At least one of Toronto’s seven new councillors, Joe Cressy, supports ranked ballots. (And so, of course, does John Tory, who also gets a vote.) If each of the incumbents who voted in favour of ranked ballots in 2013 did so again when the issue returned to council, the item would have more than enough support. “We’ve had no indication that city council wouldn’t follow through,” says Katherine Skene, co-chair of the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto, an organization that has consulted with both Tory and the province on the introduction of ranked balloting.
Critics argue that ranked balloting is a more time-consuming and complex system than first-past-the-post. If anything is going to scuttle the idea in Toronto, though, it will be the monetary cost. A 2013 city staff report notes that the change would require “extensive public consultation” and “an extensive voter education campaign.” Voting staff would need training, and each polling station would initially need more staff to clarify how the system works, the report says. A ranked model would also require more ballots and new technology—though the city intends to buy new voting equipment for the next election, regardless. All of this would require money.
The experiences of cities that already use ranked balloting hint at what Toronto might expect to pay. In 2004, San Francisco (population 775,000 at the time) spent $1.6 million to upgrade voting equipment and another $800,000 on voter education. Minneapolis (population 400,000) spent $100,000 to mail voting guides to every household in the city, and the cost of elections increased by $350,000 when the city switched to ranked balloting, largely because staff spent 15 days hand-counting ballots—something Toronto would avoid with new technology. Regardless, with a population several times larger, Toronto would probably need to spend several million dollars on implementation and education.
“The cost is something that city staff would have to think about. There are obviously costs attached, but it’s not a difficult change to make,” says Skene. The future of ranked balloting in Toronto will likely depend on whether council sees things the same way.
BTW. You do not have to choice more than one candidate on the ballot. If you choose only one, then that is fine.
However, you can make your in-law’s nephew’s daughter as your number one, followed by your “real” choice as number two, and someone else as your number three.
This is a change without a difference, i.e. a political distraction.
Most Toronto Councillors are multi-term incumbents already elected by a majority of voters.
The ranked ballot will re-elect them and leave unaddressed the basic flaw in their single-member-fiefdom system. Who represents all the voters/taxpayers who didn’t vote for the winners?
Nobody,
The deliberate systematic denial of representation to half the electorate goes far to explain many of Council’s failings.
This single-councillor ward ranked ballot system will not improve the diversity of Toronto’s council. In Minneapolis which uses the same system as proposed, minorities on its city council represent much less than its percentage of population warrants.
This particular ranked ballot proposal will make no practical difference to Toronto’s city council. About 95% of the candidates leading on the first ballot count will get elected. The council will remain predominantly white. This proposal represents a veneer of reform.
A stupid reform that is intended to silence minority voices (Australia’s House of Representatives has only ever elected one visible minority candidate). Had Calgary used this system in 2010, Naheed Nenshi would not have become the first Muslim mayor of a major North American city.
In all the megacity elections, there have been fewer than 10 races that a ranked ballot would have overturned. It wouldn’t have changed any of our Mayoralty elections but would have given Ford bragging rights to “majority support”.
Most cities in the world don’t use first past the post or “ranked ballots” (more usually called AV or IRV). They use proportional representation (PR). PR doesn’t require political parties so there is no reason why it can’t work in Toronto.
Even in the U.S., more cities use the semi-proportional “cumulative vote” (familiar to anyone who follows reality TV shows like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars) than use AV/IRV. When the courts order U.S. jurisdictions to change their electoral system to allow greater diversity, they mandate cumulative vote.
City council was influenced by a lobbyist to adopt ranked ballots, even though their own staff told them that further investigation and consultation was needed. If city council goes ahead with this without consulting electoral system experts, this will be a case of act in haste, repent in leisure.
So you are saying that you can make it the same as our current system or use it to encourage joke candidates to run? Don’t we have enough of them already? When we have an average of 5 or 6 candidates in every ward, why would be we want more? We need more serious candidates and more diversity on council, neither of which ranked ballots provides.
BTW: people should also note that not everyone’s secondary preferences get taken into account. It’s only the secondary choices of the supporters of the least popular candidates. In most races this is fewer than 1/4 of the votes. The secondary choices of the vast majority of voters have no impact.
Not only does this give the supporters of fringe candidates extra power but it also means that a ranked ballot brings very few extra votes into play. In the 2010 Toronto election, for example, only 5% more votes would have influenced the results and only 1 or 2 races might have been changed. And when the result does change, it means that fewer voters actually got their first choice of representative! This is an improvement?
As John Deverell notes below, almost half the voters still won;t be represented by anyone they voted for. Using proportional representation the vast majority are represented by their
first choice.
You’re right. Our single-member wards not only mean that half the voters won’t be represented by their first choice of candidate no matter what ballot we use but also that people have no choice about who they deal with for local issues. As Mel Brooks observed in his “History of the World Part1”, it’s good to be King.
Such a great idea for Toronto – officials elected with majority support, no more pushing candidates out because of the risk of the spoiler effect (aka vote splitting). It’s a great first step towards a healthier democracy.
It’s too bad this this article doesn’t focus more on the strong benefits that switching to a ranked balloting system offers. I think the most important of these is the way that it changes the character of the political conversation. Instead of candidates being rewarded for divisive tactics and negative campaigning, ranked balloting encourages a more positive issue focused discussion because of how candidates need to appeal to other candidate’s supporters. Since you cannot win with only 30% of the vote you need to build a wider coalition and the only way to do that is to actually get a majority of the voters to like you more than the next best choice. This would be a massive improvement over the current system and would help revitalize engagement and improve the policies ultimately adopted by our representatives.
Gary, what you are saying is patently false. Australia has elected many visible minority representatives using the alternative vote system. Similarly, it is impossible to replay past elections and pretend that you can predict their outcome using a different system. Ranked ballot would have changed the campaign (for the better) to such an important extent that such thought experiments are basically useless. The fact is, if ranked balloting had been in more widespread use, it’s likely we would have had a Muslim mayor of a major city years before 2010.
Why focus on the one or two candidates who win with a small vote share when most councillors win with over 50% of the vote? The real problem isn’t that we don’t elect councillors with a (manufactured) majority but rather that we don’t elect a representative council. We need a reform that will elect a council that looks like the citizenry – with more women and visible minorities. All that the ranked ballot proposal does is cement the advantage of the largest demographic.
Any system that tries to end vote splitting is essentially saying that we don’t want to give minorities representation. As for pushing candidates out, I note we get 5 or 6 candidates per ward each election, so it doesn’t seem to be happening. If you look at the evidence instead of just repeating the spin from a professional lobbyist, no sane person would advocate this system.
Our current system is actually the least awful winner-take-all system. Exchanging it for another winner-take-all system just makes real reform harder. We’ve seen this in the 5 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces that tried it. They all simply reverted to their previous system when ranked ballots just proved to be a more complex and expensive way of electing the same people.
If that is true, name them. Which federal districts did they win and in which elections?
As for the impossibility of predicting the outcomes based on a different voting system, it’s quite easy and is done often when comparing various voting systems. Trying to pretend that the supporters of the two right-wing establishment candidates in the 2010 Calgary election would not have mostly gone to each other in a ranked ballot is just silly.
Not only that, but you are actually arguing against your system by saying they wouldn’t. You’re alleging that the two similar candidates wouldn’t be backing each other as their second choice is arguing that a ranked ballot election would be even more partisan than first past the post.
We see the same rejection of minorities happening in the U.S., where it’s entrenched two-party system effectively gives you the same results as a ranked ballot (all the votes go to the top two candidates) – they have trouble electing minorities too. This is a “feature” of the voting
Deal with facts and evidence. Stop repeating the spin-doctoring of a paid lobbyist.
Right on! Regardless of the name vote123 accomplishes exactly what you prefer. Do notice as well that through a voluntary pre-vote123 in any district that district has the democratic power to make a difference yet in 2015 fed election by giving the 50%+1 or larger majority the democratic power to elect whoever we wish.
Regarding Dale’s “Any system that tries to end vote splitting is essentially saying that we don’t want to give minorities representation”? Is that not the moral equivalent of Monsanto arguing to feed the poor? Which party system is here for minority rights?
Fully agreed that the important difference of moving from take no prisoner competition to a cooperation for the common good is a big plus. Regardless of the name, vote123 ballots accomplishes exactly what you prefer.
Do please notice as well that through a voluntary pre-vote123 in any district that district has the democratic power to make a difference yet in 2015 fed election by giving the 50%+1 or larger majority the democratic power to elect whoever we wish.
Regarding Dale’s comments? He pushes PR but then refuses to explain how he can argue the present system is bad yet under a mixed PR system 100% of the local district candidates are still elected by the present vulnerable to vote-splitting system.
Thank-you for providing such a delightful argument that voting first for the best, then the next until you lessor of two evils is so much better than being limited to voting only for the latter.
Regardless of what you call the vote123 ballot, do please notice as well that through a voluntary pre-vote123 in any district that district has the democratic power to make a difference yet in 2015 fed election by giving the 50%+1 or larger majority the democratic power to elect whoever we wish and avoid wasting their ballot. Well over half of all of Canada’s MP’s are MPs where the 50%+1 or greater majority that voted did not vote for the MP declared as elected
Regarding Dale’s comments? He pushes PR but then refuses to explain how he can argue the present system is bad yet under a mixed PR system 100% of the local district candidates are still elected by the present vulnerable to vote-splitting system as just defined
Hold on now Eduard, why should I explain why the current system is bad? I’m not defending it – just saying your system is even worse. I’ve also never suggested that we need a mixed-PR system – that’s just one of many PR models. However mixed-PR systems still give you the same results as any other PR system – namely that almost everyone is represented by someone they voted for.
Conversely, the change you are so passionately advocating gives fewer people their first choice of representative. If people think they will happy with their second choice, they just have to vote tactically under our current system. Your system enforces tactical voting.
Your point about federal elections is simply absurd. In the U.S. 2012 house elections, every representative won with 50%+1 or more yet the Democrats still managed to win the popular vote but got fewer seats than the Republicans. The same thing happens in Australia. This is a feature of winner-take-all elections.
Of course, even a manufactured 50%+1 voters being represented is a pitifully low target. Even a poor implementation of proportional representation gives you at least 67%. Most do much better. Proportional representation doesn’t require parties so there is no excuse not to demand it for Toronto.
Sorry Eduard but you remain wrong. AV still demands tactical voting. If your preferred candidate will lose if votes split favour the candidate you don’t want. you have to rank your second choice first even if your first choice would have one under first past the post. AV just makes tactical voting more complicated.
Your repetition of the fallacy that having each candidate by a manufactured majority (counting people’s second choices as equal to their first) doesn’t make it true. The examples of the few jurisdictions that have used it demonstrate conclusively that it can produce worse “phony majorities” than our current system.
And again, your arguing against a system that no one has proposed for Toronto is just silly. There are many kinds of proportional representation, not just mixed-member. However even mixed member systems give you the same results – a council that represents Toronto.
If you would do a little research into voting systems instead of spending all your time promoting one of the worst (and least popular) systems ever devised, you wouldn’t keep embarrassing yourself. You don’t like the “lesser of two evils” but want us to adopt a system that tries to give us just that.
Eduard: stop describing the U.S. system to us. They have their primaries to select the most popular candidates to go head to head. Can you honestly say that their system works better than ours? It doesn’t matter whether you are left or right, half the time you hate who won.
Moreover, the need to pander to extremist groups for support has given Australia the same toxic partisan politics as the American two-party system. If you want friendlier politics, you need to eliminate winner-take-all elections and the phony majorities they produce.
Look at Australia. Their last Labour government introduced a carbon tax. Their current Alliance government rescinded it. Do you really think these policy lurches help anyone?
And I’m afraid your “moral equivalent” argument doesn’t hold up. Proportional representation (used by most of the world’s democracies) has been demonstrated to provide minorities with representation. How is that the equivalent of a public-relations spin?
Could it be that you are against real democracy?
As a poll clerk for the two federal elections, i had to go through a similar training, as all Elections Canada volunteers and staff do, thus updating the existing training program to accommodate for a better, up-to-date, system would be a viable investment of effort and resources in the democratic process.
BTW: again, the American two-party system produces essentially the same results as the Australian AV system you love. I note that neither system has been able to elect a Muslim mayor of a major city. Nenshi won because vote splitting allows minorities to sometimes get elected. The AV (ranked ballot) system tries to eliminate those splits, which is why it fails minorities. You don’t get effective representation by wishful thinking or spin doctoring. You need to look at how systems work in practice.
There are more women and people of colour on Minneapolis council after the last ranked ballot election than there was before, and several of these members attribute their success to ranked choice voting. Minneapolis’ female mayor Betsy Hodges, for example, began her comments on election night by saying…. “Welcome to ranked choice voting Minneapolis!!!” I would know – I was in the room for it!
The percentage of women and visible minorities/people of colour is still below the average population. Single-member district ranked ballots will produce very little difference between the current first-past-the-post system and the Alternative Vote system. Visible minorities will still have a difficult time getting elected in areas of the city where people who are white are a plurality or majority. Yes, there are exceptions, but not the norm.
Based on some of the comments I read on the internet version of Toronto’s newspapers and magazines, I notices that quite a few people held racist views of some candidates. Unfortunately, people do have racial and cultural biases when voting. It distorts the percentage of elected members from particular groups compared to the percentage of their populations. Essentially, the person most likely to get elected will represent the dominant cultural/racial group in a ward.
Why are some people supporting a single-member representative district ranked ballot system (Alternative Vote)? I think it’s because if they can get this system implemented in Toronto, they will propose it provincially and federally. They will propose the Alternative Vote system (which is not proportional) over proportional representation voting systems. These same people claim to support proportional representation provincially and federally. However, when they get the chance, they will support this ranked ballot system for Ontario and federally.
In the advancement of genuine democracy it’s a pleasure making your acquaintance as one so concerned to have traveled to Minneapolis for that historic event.
Further to your post across Canada ever since the party leadership races adopted either a vote123 ballot or some variation thereof women have been elected as never before. Kim Campbell for the PCs comes to mind federally and nearly every province. has either had a female premier or opposition leader. Just a few years ago there were about 70% or so of Canadians who had a female premier.
For your further information this improvement in the caliber of candidates elected is now also possible with a voluntary community conducted pre-vote123 and applied as a strategic vote on 2015 voting day!
Actually the voting for party leaderships has not changed dramatically. They used to use runoffs and now they use instant runoffs. The big difference is that they switched from delegates to party membership to elect the leaders. Kim Campbell was elected by the old system unless my memory is failing me.
As for a pre-vote 123, I assume you are meaning to choose one ABC candidate. Historically this has not been a winning strategy. For example, in a recent federal by-election in Oshawa, it was clear that this would be a race between the NDP and Conservatives. The Green support appears to have gone to the NDP, the Liberals stayed home and the Conservative voters came out in large numbers because their party was being ganged-up on.
The end result was that the Conservatives took the riding by a larger margin than in the previous election where there was no real ABC campaign.
ABC only works in the fairy tales it’s supporters tell each other – kind of like the way ranked work. :)
It’s a point I have considered for some time and curious what in your view are possible considerations after “It’s a great first step towards a healthier “?
On point I would suggest a better counting method be used as a fall-back to avoid the residual vote-split still possible with a redistributive counting method. Please see votefair.org which is not to be confused with fairvote.ca
Should PR adjustments still be needed, my sense is socia-economic, minorities and gender inequality in representation would be of a higher value than party PR.
Actually, in Minneapolis women are 7 out of 14 seats (including the mayor), which is exactly 50%, very close to the number of women in the population. Sadly, only 3 of those 14 are people of colour (Cano, Yang and Warsame), only 21%, but luckily this is an improvement, approaching the actual percentage in the population of Minneapolis, which is 36% .
Should PR adjustments still be needed? The method described in votefair.org isn’t new. It’s score/range voting, which is a degenerate form of the semi-proportional cumulative voting. It’s just another form of winner-take-all and, as such, is still worse than first past the post.
Every winner-take-all system that tries to “improve” first past the post does so by trying to elect the most broadly popular candidate in each district. This makes it less proportional because it makes it even harder for minority positions to gain representation.
Chery-picking data doesn’t tell the whole story. In San Francisco’s council, gender parity got worse after they adopted ranked ballots. The number of female board members declined from 4 or 5 in the last decade before ranked ballots down to 2 or 3 in the elections since adoption.
Australia’s and America’s House elections should elect far more women than Canada’s because their two-party systems force voters to pick whatever candidate their preferred party nominates. Instead they elect about the same number or fewer.
Meanwhile nations that use proportional systems elect far more women than Canada, Australia or the U.S.. New Zealand, which used MMP, elects 50% more women than Australia.
Instead of some diversion or half-truth, might you with a simple yes or no indicate whether you are you the Gary Dale identified in wikipedia as having run for the NDP several times, “joined the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC)”, 2 years later “Dale became a founding board member of the Canadian Muslim Union when it split from the MCC” and have been or are on Fairvote’s executive regarding the Toronto and national chapter as per
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democratic_Party_candidates,_2004_Canadian_federal_election#Gary_Dale_.28Pickering.E2.80.94Scarborough_East.29
Furthermore, with “Fairvote’s) self-described mission to oppose the ranked ballot and advance PR and in the above having posted that the “(vote123) system is even worse (than fptp)… However mixed-PR systems still give you the results… that almost everyone is represented by someone they voted for” without sidestepping the question, how does MMP make for a better system when 100% of the pool of district MPs is still elected by the toxic method you want changed?
For the benefit of others I will add that Dale has advanced the rhetoric of “I want all voters to be represented by their first choice of candidate, not their second, third or lower.”
This and several posts may be found here https://disqus.com/home/discussion/thetyee/want_electoral_reform_get_trudeau_on_board/#comment-1803483072
As well as here:
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/12/20/Changing_Our_Electoral_System_Would_Renew_Canadian_Democracy/
And you accuse me of “diversions and half-truths”? My reference to toxic was the binary voter choice that “improvements” to first past the post, such as AV, usually lead to.
I support MMP because it’s winner-take-all local seats aren’t the whole story. The rest of the story are the regional seats that a elected to make the system fully proportional. Parties that win too many local seats get fewer regional seats and vice-versa.
So if your local candidate didn’t win, you get your regional candidate, etc.. You get a representative who you actually voted for. You have to be somewhere out in the political fringes not to elect someone.
In your preferred score/range voting, the winner in your local district may well be someone that you scored zero and that’s it.
Moreover, why would you score any candidate as less than 100% if you want them to win? Conversely why would you score any other candidate more than 0% when doing so reduces your preferred candidate’s chance of winning?
We’ve seen this happen even when the scores are public, such as some sports (e.g. gymnastics). Why wouldn’t any voter play the role of the partisan judge?
In score/range voting, you will typically only rate candidates honestly when they have no chance of defeating your preferred candidate.
Conversely, in proportional representation you are always voting for the candidate you want and, unless they are exceptionally unpopular, they will be elected.
As for my long history of involvement in progressive causes, I’ve never denied it. I will also note that Fair Vote Canada is promoting the voting system used by the vast majority of industrial democracies while you are promoting a voting system that has never been used in national elections anywhere.
Moreover, it has proved problematic in the sports events where it is used so that they have usually had to modify it to remove blatantly partisan scores. Would you support that kind of measure – having the state modify your ballot?
BTW: we can’t have party-PR in a city without parties. However parties are not needed for PR.
Nor has ranked ballot been shown to improve gender or minority representation. In fact the evidence suggests that it actually harms both. There are very good reasons why ranked ballots (better known as Alternative Vote (AV), Instant Runoff Voting or Preferential Ballots) is one of the least used systems in politics.
Please forgive my lack of understanding. How does PR work when there are no parties, as in the case of civic elections?
Proportional representation has nothing to do with political parties. It has to do with the elected assembly representing the population that elected it. People frequently use parties as an easy way to measure how proportional an election was but you don’t need them to have proportional representation.
The ancient Athenians, for example, drew lots to determine which of their citizens sat on their Council of 500 (probably the most proportional system because it takes money and spin doctoring out of the selection). A number of nations use STV to elect people in multi-member districts. SNTV achieves the same results as STV 90% of the time so is also reasonably proportional. The U.S. courts have frequently mandated cumulative voting to address representation issues. None of these systems make any use of parties.
If candidates are allowed in run as part of a “slate” then any of the other proportional systems will also work. A slate is not a party in that there is no leader, no formal structure, no party nominations and no joint fundraising but is frequently used to help voters identify the tendencies of candidates.
Leaving aside your unsubstantiated opinions, thank-you for your confirmation to my first question! Lastly, In plain English what is “the binary voter choice”?
I’m sorry Eduard that you don’t know the difference between unsubstantiated opinions and ones based on facts and evidence. There are good reasons why no nation has ever adopted score/range voting and why the bulk of industrial democracies use some form of proportional representation.
As to your question, a binary choice is exactly what the words say. It’s a choice between two options, whether yes or nor, true or false, Democrat or Republican, or the two remaining candidates in a ranked ballot election.
Just re-read the article and noticed a glaring error in it. The second paragraph states that London, England uses ranked ballots. This is false. They do not use the system RaBIT has been promoting for any of their elections. Their mayor is elected using a supplementary-vote system where if the leading candidate doesn’t receive a majority of the votes, they take the top two candidates then add votes from supporters of other candidates who listed one of the top two as their second choice. If you didn’t list one of the top two candidates as your first or second choice, your vote is discarded.
They use a proportional mixed-member system to elect their Assembly.
I’d like to know how this egregious error got by the fact-checkers? Did the editor just assume that the writer knew what they were talking about?
Simply focusing on your own history of postings and your liberal use of unsubstantiated facts and opinions, might you not be well advised to be careful which pot you call black?
BTW, thanks for your clarification on binary. Last time I checked US primaries and elections are not limited to two candidates but use the same winner take all system we have in Canada that both you and I want to change. The only diff is I want real change. You only change the words and conflate this with your party PR fact-check opinions.
Which of my statements is not confirmed by a cursory look at the evidence? That score/range voting is problematic even in the sporting events where it is sometimes used or that it is never used in national elections? That AV is one of the least used voting systems ever devised or that cumulative voting is actually used more frequently and has been mandated by some U.S. courts to fix representation problems? That most industrial democracies use proportional representation?
And misquoting me doesn’t make what I said wrong. I said “They have their primaries to select the most popular candidates to go head to head”. And that is precisely how it works out. It’s rare for someone to not run as either a Democrat or Republican.
If you’d actually bothered to read my posts, I have also never said that we needed party PR. PR doesn’t require parties (some even argue that they get in the way). If you don’t understand how PR can work without parties, educate yourself instead of simply denying the facts to promote a ludicrous system.