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Tom Monto

London, ON first gov't to use Alternative Voting since 1971

The 2018 London, Ontario city election was the most recent use of AV in Canada.


This was the first government election in Canada to use preferential balloting since Calgary's last STV election in 1971. In that election Calgary's mayor was elected using Alternative Voting.


Calgary had used Alternative Voting for election of its mayor and city councillors in the 1960s.


AV had been used in various elections in Alberta and Manitoba, from 1924 to 1955, and in BC elections in 1952 and 1953, as described in my blog "Variety of electoral systems used in Canada".


Alternative Voting has been used for election of the leaders of our major political parties for many years. Long used for fairness at this level, it has not been adopted for elections of representatives of the general public until now.


The London election system allowed each voter to mark no more than three preferences.


In London's 2018 election, with 15 candidates running for mayor, many votes - more than 20 percent of the total - were exhausted by the time one candidate accumulated a majority of the votes still in play to secure the mayor's seat. This was likely caused by the limit of three choices. Thirteen eliminations occurred, to thin the field of candidates to only two. In each one, about a third or quarter of the votes were exhausted, rising to the one half level in the 13th round after many votes had used up their three preferences.


To make things worse, when the field thinned down to two, 21,000 votes were exhausted and only 13,000 separated the two remaining candidates. (from "City of London, Ontario, Municipal Election - certified results" website)


It must be difficult to know, with that many exhausted votes, whether the correct person won the election.


Thanks for reading.

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