Electoral systems are not really changed “on a whim,” according to Laura Stephenson, a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario.
“Once they’re in place, the tend to stay in place unless there’s a real uproar or reason to change it,” she said.
Yukoners may have the opportunity next year to decide whether there’s enough “uproar” or reason to change from the current first-past-the-post system — where the candidate with the most votes in a riding is elected — to something different.
This month, a citizens’ assembly of Yukon residents recommended that the territory switch to a ranked ballot system, and the Liberal government has responded by saying they’ll put the choice to all Yukon voters in a referendum next year on electoral reform.
Ranked ballot systems can vary but in essence they mean that if no candidate in a riding gets at least 50 per cent of ballots cast, voters’ second or even third choices would be used to ultimately determine the winner.
Stephenson’s home community of London, Ont., adopted a ranked ballot system for its 2018 municipal election. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government later passed legislation to block municipalities from using ranked ballots in future elections in Ontario.
Stephenson spoke to the CBC’s Max Leighton on Yukon Morning about ranked ballot systems, and the experience in London in 2018.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did it go in London, when it was tried?
It went pretty smoothly. It required an information campaign, and I know there was some question amongst voters — “what do I do again?” — and having to remember how to go about doing it and marking the ballot for three different people that way, and indicating for second and third. But for the most part it, you know, it worked fine.
The outcome didn’t really change. I mean, one of the things about any electoral system change is that typically it’s going to be championed by those who expect a difference in the outcome. One of the ideas behind ranked ballots is that if you have that system, then it should mean that more people are going to cooperate with each other or be a little bit more conciliatory, because the idea would be that each candidate needs to think about being the second or third choices of other candidate’s supporters. And so the idea is that maybe you’d have more civility in politics because you’re going to want to appeal to a broader audience — these kinds of things would would come up.
That’s not what you saw in London, then?
I mean, it wasn’t all that much different. And it’s hard to say that it would happen right away.
I will say that any changes when it comes to electoral systems are going to take a couple of rounds to really be seen, because what ends up happening is that both the candidates and the voters have to adjust to this new system. And each system has different ways of playing it, right? Like you think about Monopoly and Scrabble — you’re going to play by different rules because they’re different kinds of games. And that’s exactly what electoral systems are. The first time you play Monopoly, you’re going to be following the rules, right? And the second time you play it, you’ll be like, “oh, this is how I wanna get at my opponent and this is what I’m gonna do.” So you have some idea of the strategy involved.
There’s a learning curve both for candidates and for voters when it comes to these kinds of systems. And the key is that they understand exactly how their ballot was going to count.
So first-past-the-post — easy, right? You mark it for one person, whoever gets the most votes wins. That’s really simple. In a ranked ballot system, all the first-round choices get calculated. If there is someone who has more than 50 per cent, then they’re the ones who are going to be elected. But if there isn’t, then the person who has the least amount of support sees their vote redistributed to people according to second choices of those people, on those ballots. And then again, you say, hey, is anyone winning? And if not, you do the same thing again and again and again, until you end up with someone who has a majority of support. So in theory, what this means is that whoever is going to win will be more of a consensus-type of candidate than someone else.
Does this then favour more moderate candidates?
There is some evidence that that would be the case. So in municipal elections, if you don’t have parties, then somebody who appeals to more people would make sense.
We did an analysis quite a long time ago looking at, I’ll call it a fake vote. We asked people to vote as if they had a different electoral system in Ontario. We did it with the provincial parties and we did see that the Liberals were going to have an advantage. Now, the Liberals as a centrist party, this follows exactly what you’re saying, right? They’re more moderate, they’re going to appeal to more people on both sides, and so they’re likely to get an advantage.
So what advice would you give a jurisdiction that was considering embracing that system?
The advice I would give is that it can be confusing for voters to understand because it’s going to be different than what they expect, and it’s asking you to do something different, ranking candidates. It’s important that the specific rules are communicated. So in other words, what is going to invalidate your ballot, right? Do you have to mark everybody? Do you just mark three, etcetera? Like what are the rules and and how should it be done?
So there really needs to be a good information campaign so that voters aren’t turned off by the idea of, “oh, it’s so complex, I don’t want to think about it, I’m not going to bother voting.” We don’t want to see that.
And of course, it’s always good to think about telling voters, hey, this is a way where you can have a say even if your first-choice candidate doesn’t get elected. You can have a say and maybe be a deciding factor in the alternatives, like between your second and third choice or something like that.
So there are some benefits, I think, in representation for voters, but there is some complexity on the other side. It’s not overly complex. I mean, most of us know how to rank our preferences. It’s just a matter of making the ballot more familiar to voters so that they aren’t concerned about what they will do once they get to the voting.
