Mayor in London, Ont., elected after 14 rounds in Canada’s 1st ranked ballot
The country’s first municipal vote to be held under a ranked-ballot system was finally decided on Tuesday, with a mayor declared after 14 rounds of counting.
Under the system, in which voters picked their top three candidates in order of preference, Ed Holder was declared winner over his closest challenger about 18 hours after polls closed Monday evening.
This was the first provincewide election in Ontario in which municipalities were allowed to choose using ranked ballots rather than the traditional first-past-the-post system that rewards a person with the most votes, regardless of whether that translates into a majority.
Only London opted to go that ranked-ballot route after public consultation and passage of a bylaw. Two other communities — Cambridge and Kingston — asked voters during Monday’s election whether they should move to ranked ballots in 2022. Voters in both centres said yes but Cambridge didn’t have a large enough turnout to make the result stick.