Doug Ford’s meddling will haunt Toronto’s mayoral election

The ghost of Doug Ford is wafting over our mayoral election.

Toronto could be making history in the June 26 vote. Instead, thanks to the premier’s obsession with reining in — and reigning over — the city, the election will be a missed opportunity for democracy.

That’s because there are too many high profile candidates to end up with a solid choice. Yes, you can have too much of a good thing — candidates — if no one emerges as a clear winner in the competition.

And when the winner’s mandate is a mirage, it makes a mockery of democracy. Here’s why:

As many as eight well-known politicians are declared or likely to enter the race, with another four lesser lights lining up to run. That’s 12 candidates competing for the limelight — and splitting the vote on voting day.

Which means we could have a mayor who carries the day, but backed by a slim plurality far from a solid majority. Imagine a winner who won barely 17 per cent of the ballots emerging as chief executive of Canada’s biggest city with so little legitimacy.

What makes this scenario so pitiable is that it was so avoidable. For there is — or was — a viable alternative.

An electronic runoff would ensure the winner truly wins the day with a majority. It’s called the “ranked ballot,” which allows voters to rank their choices on the ballot in order of preference.

If no one wins a majority on the first round, the losers’ votes are reallocated (based on the preferences their supporters indicated on their ballots as second and third choices). The process of eliminating the losers and reapportioning their votes continues until someone attains a majority of the total votes cast.

Sound foreign? It’s an utterly Canadian convention.

In truth, it’s precisely the process used by Ford to win the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives in 2018, and how most politicians are chosen to head their parties. In fact, that’s how Dalton McGuinty won the Liberal leadership years ago — in the middle of the night, when the fifth ballot took him over the 50 per cent threshold.

With a ranked ballot, you don’t need to stay up all night for subsequent ballots. You simply rank your first, second and third choices when you arrive at the voting booth, and await the magic of electronic runoffs.

It’s emphatically faithful to democracy. Which is why Ontario first raised the ranked ballot idea in a 2015 consultation, and decided in 2017 to let municipalities try it out.

“At a time when voter turnout is going down in many communities, it’s time look at ideas that can reverse that trend,” mused Ted McMeekin, the municipal affairs minister, in 2015.

London used the ranked ballot successfully in the 2018 election, while Kingston and Cambridge held referendums that green-lighted the idea. Toronto also studied the idea, which had wide support from many councillors and then-mayor John Tory.

But Ford has never been able to stay away from municipal meddling. Within days of becoming premier in 2018 — years after losing his own mayoral campaign in 2014 — Ford unilaterally halved the size of city council.

Who knew that second-guessing Toronto would be his number one provincial priority? His obsession with intervention became big news when the case went to the courts and he threatened to override the Charter of Rights to get his way.

Yet for all the publicity in 2018 over his wrong-headed rightsizing of city council in mid-campaign, barely anyone noticed his fateful 2020 decision to banish the ranked ballot in mid-pandemic. Under cover of COVID-19, buried in the bowels of a broad legislative package, the premier inserted wording to undo the previous law enabling ranked ballots in municipal elections.

Banned. Barred. Prohibited.

This anti-democratic decision came so suddenly and thoughtlessly that London’s then-mayor Ed Holder, a former federal Conservative cabinet minister, forced Ford to reimburse his city for transition expenses. It also undercut the momentum for Toronto, Canada’s biggest city, to modernize its vote.

The June 26 special election would have been an ideal showcase for a ranked ballot. That’s because it is a mayoral-only vote to replace Tory after he resigned unexpectedly this year — without the distractions of regular councillor or trustee races.

Now, the election campaign is destined to be a free-for-all as candidates compete for attention. When I compared notes with city hall bureau chief David Rider, he enumerated the declared and undeclared rivals:

Councillors Brad Bradford and Josh Matlow; former councillor Ana Bailão; former police chief Mark Saunders; MPP Mitzie Hunter; and ex-candidate Gil Penalosa. Add councillor Stephen Holyday as another possible, along with ex-MP Olivia Chow. Three more former councillors and a columnist with less name recognition shall go unnamed here. At least 10 more also-rans are likely to run again, which brings us to at least 22 rivals.

That’s a lot of ways to split the vote, especially among centrist or centre-left candidates who are fighting for the same piece of pie in the mushy middle that represents most people. Against that backdrop, while a cluster of progressives try to one up each other, a candidate of the right could win the fight by default.

In which case the premier may have the last laugh, knowing he helped elect the mayor he always wanted to be, while denying Toronto the ranked ballot system used by his PC party. His hypocrisy is a lost opportunity for democracy.

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