Only one of the five winners of Thursday night’s byelections won a true majority. It was Percy Hatfield the union stalwart who seized the riding of Windsor-Tecumseh for the NDP. Hatfield racked up 15,693 votes or 61.1% of the vote. The six other candidates combined didn’t match half his mandate. But elsewhere the election night winners prevailed by gaining a plurality of the ballots cast and automatically invoking the “first past the post” rule of Canadian elections. When people talk of a democratic deficit it’s usually some twaddle about why an obscure interest group can’t get elected. The real democratic deficit occurs it would seem when a multiplicity of candidates makes it impossible for a voter to act strategically to express his/her will. That’s where the so-called ranked ballots concept applies. It permits voters to pick a first choice and second choice. If the first choice of voters doesn’t produce a majority winner, there is an instant runoff to choose one. Of course there is no way of knowing where second place votes will go and such runoffs will frequently strengthen the position of the plurality winner. The current byelection that jumps out in this context is Scarborough-Guildwood where Ms. Hunter finished 1246 votes ahead of the PC candidate Ken Kirupa. But Kirupa and the third-place NDP candidate Adam Giambone had an aggregate of more than 14,600 votes compared to Ms. Hunter’s 8852. Similarly in Ottawa South, the PC and NDP candidates out-polled the Liberal John Fraser by 3726 votes. All of this is fun to contemplate as the government finds comfort in its two retained seats. The link takes you to a post about the prospect of ranked ballots being in place for the 2018 Toronto general election Previous posts
