The City of Kingston (Ontario) has adopted what it calls ranked voting for future elections, Currently Premier Ford has stopped this switch, but it seems in the future Kingston will use a system other than First Past The Post.
But what the new system will look like and how it will work is not clear. The explanation offered on the City of Kingston's website presents a vote-counting process quite different from that used in any known Instant-runoff Voting system.
It is possible the proposed system is the Bucklin system, used in Cleveland (Ohio) city elections more than a hundred years ago. There it was found to be almost useless as it encouraged voters to plump - only mark one preference - and thus eventually become just a First Past The Post system, with the same disadvantages as FPTP. Voters learned that plumping was safest as they all too often found their secondary preference used against their first preference.
Even though Ford has cancelled ranked voting in city elections, Kingston hopefully will use ranked votes in the future but Kingston's explanation of ranked voting (on the Kingston website) is unusual if Instant-runoff Voting is intended.
Does it really show how ranked voting is expected to work in Kingston elections?
When people in Canada today use the term ranked voting, generally they mean Instant-Runoff Voting or Alternative Voting. But the explanation provided on the Kingston website presents an unusual method of counting the vote and filling the seats.
Here's what it says:
...If subsequent rounds of ballot counting were required, the elector's second choice would be counted in the second round and the third choice would be counted in the third round.
[This is unclear but it likely means that if no candidate gets a majority on the first count, the secondary preference are added to the first preferences and both are counted together in the second count. It would be a strange system indeed that on the second round threw out the first preferences and moved to just counting secondary preferences!]
If an elector only ranks one candidate With ranked choice voting, an elector has the option to rank multiple candidates for mayor and district councillor in their order of preference. However, an elector could still vote for only one candidate for mayor or only one candidate for district councillor if that was their preference.
If an elector only ranks one candidate, that candidate would be the elector's highest preference and their ballot would only be counted in the first round of ballot counting. If additional rounds of ballot counting were required, a ballot with only one ranking would become "exhausted" after the first round and would be removed from further counts as it could not be redistributed to any of the remaining candidates...
(https://www.cityofkingston.ca/city-hall/elections/ranked-ballots)
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The usual explanation of Instant-runoff Voting is: voters rank multiple candidates if desired.
(Note: the voter is not voting for all those choices, only ranking his or her preferences. The vote will only be used to elect one candidate, at the most. None of the marked back-up preferences on the vote are used unless the first-preferred candidate on the vote is eliminated.)
The vote-counting process used in the usual Instant-Runoff Voting is: all first-preference votes are counted.
the number of votes that is the majority of valid votes is calculated. A candidate getting this amount will be declared elected. In other words, any candidate getting a majority of votes still in the play will be declared elected.
The vote count ends as soon as a candidate gets that majority of the votes or a majority of votes still in play.
if no candidate has a majority on the first count, in the second count the least-popular candidate is eliminated and his votes are transferred according to next back-up preference, if any. (All other votes stay as they are and in each round they are counted where they lie.)
After this, until a candidate has majority of votes composed of combination of first and transferred votes of eliminated candidate(s), in each of the following counts the least-popular candidate is eliminated and votes transferred.
(Note: not all second preferences are counted in the second round. The only second preferences counted in the second round are votes that had belonged to the eliminated candidate, and the votes that bear only first preferences are still counted as long as they did not belong to the eliminated candidate.)
I would like to point out that the candidate elected under single-winner ranked voting (Instant runoff Voting or Alternative Voting) rarely vary from the candidate who would have been elected under First Past The Post. Only the winner in each ward is given all the power. Votes cast for all others are ignored. Far fairer and more proportional is a form of ranked voting where multiple candidate are elected in each ward or at-large election. This is PR-STV, which was used successfully by 20 cities and other municipalities in western Canada from 1917 to 1971 and in provincial elections in Alberta and Manitoba from 1920s to 1950s.(the mayor contest must of course be single winner.) If Kingston switched to ranked voting in multi-seat districts and uses the PR-STV system, its elections would be much fairer than they would be under FPTP. And it would also be much fairer than the Bucklin system, discredited more than a hundred years ago.
The exact form of ranked voting that Kingston will be using some time in the future is not clear judging by the description on the Kingston website. But I certainly hope it is not the Bucklin system!
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Dec. 2021 I have sent a letter of inquiry to
Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson
We'll see what response or clarification results.
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