Council seeks public input on ranked ballot voting

Ranked ballots were back on the agenda at City Council Tuesday, with councillors voting to move ahead with public consultations on switching our voting method for municipal elections.

City staff say in order to change our current first-past-the-post system for the 2018 municipal election, a decision must be made by May 1st. Ranked ballots allow voters to place candidates in their order of preference, ensuring the winning candidate gets 50 per cent of the vote.

While the date for a public participation meeting has yet to be set, an advocacy group is urging the city to establish a citizen’s reference panel that would allow a small group to make a recommendation.

“If you just got to a referendum, as we’ve seen with recent referendums such as Brexit, you have a lot of people voting on an issue that they don’t know anything about,” said Dave Meslin, Creative Director for 123 Ontario.

“A citizen’s reference panel takes it out of the hands of politicians and puts it into the hands of a small group of non-partisan citizens, who become experts through education, and then are facilitated through a deliberative process of forming a recommendation.”

Meslin says the education process would unpack the complexities of the voting issues.

“What that does is depoliticizes it, because some would argue that councillors aren’t the ones who are deciding how they are elected, the people should be.”

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While a reference panel probably wouldn’t have a recommendation by the May 1st deadline, Meslin says the delay could be worth it.

If London makes the switch to ranked ballots, it would be the first city in Ontario to do so. Staff says the change would come with a price tag of $322,000.

It could also be confusing for voters since school boards do not have permission to switch to a ranked ballot. If London were to make the change, voters would use a ranked ballot for city council, but first-past-the-post for the school board.