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| Daniel Dale |
A story tonight in the Star by Daniel Dale says that there is a lot of support at City Hall for an electoral system of so-called Ranked Ballots for the municipal election of 2018 Briefly, this system permits voters to rank candidates by number, one through whatever, according to the number of candidates. In some Toronto wards there are frequently many candidates, leading to a victor who has only a plurality of the ballots. The Ranked Ballots would give voters a winner with a majority.. As explained by Dale, if there is no majority winner, the last place candidate is eliminated and his/her second place votes are distributed as marked to the remaining candidates. This continues until there is a majority winner. The South Bayview Bulldog finds it interesting to guess how this system would have effected the results of the 2010 municipal election in local wards here. In Ward 26, Councillor Parker was elected with a plurality of only 6,203 votes out of a total of 19,832. The field in Ward 26 contained seven candidates. Equally interesting is Ward 27 where Kristyn Wong-Tam was elected with a plurality of 7,527 out of 26,619 votes cast. The riding had an astounding 15 candidates. Story by Daniel Dale.