Ranked Ballots and Representation

I was honoured to be a participant on this panel discussing ranked ballots organized by Burlington Councilor Lisa Kearns. It was an interesting, informative, and very enjoyable evening. Many thanks to Lisa for organizing it. 

Here is what I more or less said. And below that I'll try to upload the recording. 

I want to point out that most political parties select their leaders using some form of ranked ballots, even if it’s a series or run offs. This includes Doug Ford as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, notwithstanding the handicapping of urban ridings. Most recently, the selection of Erin O’Toole as Conservative Party of Canada leader was done by ranked balloting. If it hadn’t been done this way, we would be seeing Peter MacKay as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada rather than him resigning from politics once again.

The attraction in selecting a leader by ranking preferences is the legitimacy it gives the winning candidate, as being the popular choice of over 50 percent of the voters. It is a clear “mandate.”

This is significant in the case of London (Ontario) City Councilor, Arielle Kayabaga. Going on council in a “vulnerable” position as a member of several “marginal groups,” a young, black, female, single-mother, a fact that she is reminded of by Council continually including efforts to silence and remove her from council debates, she can fall back on the majority mandate she was given by the voters of her ward. She was elected clearly as the most supported candidate, by over 50%, in ward 13. This is her legitimacy. This is very important when a politician has to find support for their position and power, when they can't fall back on being a white, old, businessman.

However, there is something else going on in terms of the support given and the choices being made by voters in a ranked ballot system. Here, I’m drawing from the literature on Australia’s Lower House in the national assembly which uses Alternative Voting through ranked ballots. Ranked ballots tend to greater policy overlap, policy collaboration, and policy choice for voters, because they encourage voting by policy choice over candidate personality.

For example, I desperately want more safe bike lanes in my city. Going to the polls I am likely to rank the candidates supporting such a policy at the top of my ballot, making compromises over policy as I do down the list. Therefore, to attract my vote, even if other policies might differ from my preferences, candidates might add bike-lanes to their platforms. As a result, policy positions will tend to overlap in the election, and become more of a focus for voters. Plus, the resulting Council is likely to have more avenues for collaboration between council members. But, this isn’t just about progressively identified policy, like bike-lanes. It also holds for centre-right policies, where greater choice and more candidates are offered to voters who want to vote for “road-widening,” or “looser heritage designation” (taking examples from where I live). Certainly, in the case of Australia’s lower house, ranked ballots have helped shut out the left-wing Labour Party from forming a majority in the House.

Where all of this falls down is in the information provided to voters in general. Municipal campaigns are notoriously low-information elections. This is why turnouts are low. Voters need to have cues as to who to vote for. Provincial and federal elections have this because party affiliation is a cue. Such cues can happen in municipal elections, as it did to a small extent in London in 2014, when a clear slate of candidates runs, or a group of candidates are linked to a specific issue. In 2014 in London it was a group of younger candidates running to clean up Council and against the Fontana 8. With the decline in, closing of, and almost catastrophic eradication of local and neighbourhood media sources and election communication, this is going to be a problem no matter what electoral system is used.

As for bringing women’s representation on Councils up to over the 30% recommended by the UN, I am much less sanguine about ranked ballots. First, it’s far too early to tell based on one election in London. The hope is that ranked ballots will increase women’s representation because the policy focus and the desire to appeal not just as a first choice, but for second and third choices will keep the candidates from going negative or being particularly conflictual. This is seen as an obstacle and deterrent to women running. We can’t determine if this will get better based on one election, but in 2018, only 4 women were elected and one female incumbent was defeated, and two female candidates were targets of concerted, organized, and funded smear campaigns (this included the female incumbent who was defeated).

In Australia, the use of AV and ranking in the Lower House has not increased the diversity of representation. The Lower House hasn’t surpassed the 30% mark and is pretty much the same as Canada between 26% and 28% with its first-past-the-post system. To be honest, if we are serious about ensuring women’s representation, and the literature is clear on this, quotas, temporary or otherwise, are the way to go. In Ontario if ranked ballots are not longer on the table, according to the provincial government, then this is so far off the table it’s in another room.

 Unfortunately, the video file is too large to upload here. I'll see if there are other ways can I link to it.