So the Toronto Mayoral Election has dissolved into a contest between a wife-beating racist drunk and a high school drop-out who bled the Ontario taxpayers for a billion dollars. That is, I guess, to put it as bleakly as possible.
With no one of any real interest in the mayoral race it’s become, as with many contests in Canadian politics, a matter of a vote against instead of a vote for. Since only the criminally insane want Rob Ford for mayor—and those criminally insane, strangely enough, make up a significant portion of the city—everyone else is left voting, strategically, against a Rob Ford win. That means that everyone else has to vote for the person in second, George Smitherman, in an attempt to catapult him into first place and prevent a Rob Ford victory. But it means that voters, if they really want a say, can’t vote for their favourite candidate. A vote for Sarah Thompson or Rocco Rossi, if they were still in the race, would be a wasted vote. Both candidates stepped down because they knew that, because they knew they’d split the vote and it would mean a Rob Ford win.
In our first-passed-the-post system it’s winner takes all, even if that winner only takes a slim percentage of the overall vote. As the polls sit now, Rob Ford could win the seat for mayor of Toronto with only 25% as long as he had more of a percentage than anyone else. Indeed, much of the election talk these days has migrated from “who do you want to win?” to a question of “who do you not want to win?” as voters are driven not to elect who they think would serve our city best, but who they think can slip passed Rob Ford to capture the most votes overall, and win.
This kind of a situation highlights the weaknesses in our aging political system and it’s clear that frustration is building.
Sure, there are advantages of a winner-take-all system like ours. A first-passed-the-post system means that there are clear winners and clear majorities in provincial and federal politics. It makes for stable governments, in most situations. At the provincial and federal level any kind of mixed system that would elect officials on a basis of their overall percentage of the vote, rather than who got the most, would make for a lot more mixed governments forcing political parties to have to work together to get things done. To proponents of our current system this sounds daunting and inefficient and although these kinds of systems are used the world over, I’m inclined to sometimes agree.
What makes no sense, however, is the use of the system in municipal government.
In local government there are no political parties and so no need to implement a system that’s intended to bolster them. Instead, we’re stuck with a system that rewards the guy in first while alienating the votes of the rest of the population, which serves no discernible good. And shifting to a more representative system isn’t going to weaken or fracture government in the same way it would in provincial or federal politics because there are no political parties, there is no block voting, there is no need to form messy and complicated coalitions. As far as I can tell, there’s no argument against a change to a more representative system for municipal politics.
There are lots of choices. A kind of ranked ballot system, which I think is among the best, would mean you rank the candidates in the order that you like them. Then a series of instant “run-offs” take place. In every “round” of voting the last place person is knocked out and their votes are all moved to the voters’ second pick. If your first place pick (Rocco Rossi) is knocked out then your votes are pooled behind your second pick (Sarah Thomson) and if she is also knocked out then your votes are moved to your third pick (George Smitherman). In this system, which seems to make a lot of sense to me, my vote counts at each level and if they go to a person who is ejected from the race they’re moved to my next pick. This kind of a system would produce much better and more meaningful results. I wouldn’t have to vote George Smitherman simply because I didn’t want Rob Ford to win. I could vote for the candidate I want to win, then the one I want to win next, and then the one I want to win after that, and finally George. If the first three candidates I ranked don’t win, my votes are still behind George and I would still be helping keep Ford out of office, if nothing else.
It’s an interesting world to imagine, and I wonder what kind of pressure might begin to build up against municipal governments following this election. More than usual, tensions are high and the anxiety is that voters are being asked to vote against rather than for. It’s a bit unnerving, especially when a solution exists and it can be implement pretty painlessly. While the first-passed-the-post system might work well in provincial and federal governments, it really has no place at the municipal level. I think this year’s election highlights that quite well.
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