Will your vote actually count?

That’s supposed to be the whole purpose of the October 24 city elections, but there are warning signs to the contrary. A major one is the refusal of the Progressive Conservative provincial government to allow ranked ballots. That will be especially significant for residents of Ward Four, Ward Five and Ward Twelve, but could also affect others.

In this election there are eleven candidates in Ward Four, eleven in Ward Five, and ten in Ward Twelve. Since our elections operate on a first-past-the-post system, that means the single winner in each of these wards only has to obtain support from as little as one in ten voters.

And that’s only one in ten of those who actually vote. Across the city in the last election about 38 percent of those eligible to vote actually did so. If that doesn’t increase (and it could easily decrease to the 34 percent in the previous campaign) we could see elected councillors with the support of less than ten percent of their constituents.

This is not just a mathematical possibility. It has actually happened in Hamilton. In a 2016 by-election, Donna Skelly won with the votes of less than five percent of eligible voters. There were 22 candidates in that by-election and a turnout of just under 25 percent. Skelly was chosen by slightly less than 2000 of the 41,000 eligible electors!

More recently, in the last council general elections in 2018, Esther Pauls got the Ward 8 council seat with the support of less than ten percent of the eligible voters. There were 11 candidates in that ward and a voter turnout of nearly 39 percent.

In that case, Pauls got just over 3000 votes in capturing 25 percent of the votes cast. There were over 31,000 eligible voters. On a percentage basis she was well ahead of the three closest runners up, but the combined votes of any two of those exceeded Pauls total.

Seven years ago, the Kathleen Wynne Liberal government offered an alternative approach called ranked ballots. That allowed voters to select candidates in order of preference to try to ensure that the ultimately elected candidate was the most supported one. If no candidate gets a majority of first choices, then the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated and the second choice on their ballots is counted. The process continues until one candidate gets over 50 percent.

Hamilton city council decided not to use this option for the 2018 election but the City of London took it up. Both Kingston and Cambridge held referendums on the option and in both cities ranked ballots were overwhelmingly approved. Several other cities were also considering this option but that was all squelched in 2020 when the Ford government revoked the ranked ballot legislation.

So Ontario municipalities can no longer even consider this voting option. That leaves many Hamilton voters with a challenge, especially if they are strongly opposed to one or more candidates. That may have already happened with the Skelly and Pauls elections.

Both were candidates for the Ford government – Pauls ran for the Progressive Conservatives and was defeated in the provincial election prior to her successful run for city council, and Skelly left her council seat to successfully capture a provincial seat for the PCs.

Interestingly both were elected to city council in a part of the city that hadn’t chosen a PC candidate in a long time. Pauls actually picked up the seat vacated by Scott Duvall who had left to win the Hamilton Mountain federal seat for the NDP.

Duvall is back now chasing the Ward 7 seat occupied by Pauls. In that ward at least, voters have a clear choice. There are only two candidates – Pauls and Duvall – so there should be no confusion in this month’s election about who is most supported. That may be much less clear in other parts of the city.