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.
