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Tom Monto

2018 London Ontario mayoral election - should Holder have won?

The 2018 London Ontario election was the first in Canada to use ranked voting since 1971. But the arbitrary limit put on voters to mark no more than three preferences meant exhausted votes, ignored voter and perhaps faulty results in the end.


The mayoral contest is a case of this.


Holder, the winning mayoral candidate, was elected in the end with 44,373 when 48,320 was a majority of valid votes that were cast. So despite best intention of Alternative Voting, the winner did not have true majority. Without true majority there is no way to know that the winner should have won that that he actually had more support than any of his contenders.


Holder had led in every round but whether he had a majority of of the votes behind him was not determined in this election, due to the large number of exhausted votes and the narrowness of the win in the end.


In the results shown on the Wikipedia page, Holder is accorded 57,609 votes but that is only after his closest competitor (Paolatto) was eliminated and the votes marked for Holder as back-up preference were transferred.


But that is faulty result - it says that where all other candidates are eliminated, Holder was marked as back-up preference, but not that if Holder and Paolatto are the last two competitors which of the two would have the most support - if all the voters had input.


By the point in the vote count as held in 2018 where the field of candidates had been reduced to just those two, 21,000 votes cast had been ruled exhausted and the two contenders were only 13,000 votes apart.


Those 21,000 voters were ignored and played no part in determine which of Holder or Paoletto would be elected. But their numbers showed that they cold have crowned either of those two the winner.


See my other blogs on this ground-breaking election for more information, including


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