A better way

I am, by my own admission, very bad at making political predictions. The electorate is complicated and, when I don’t have cold, hard data in front of me, I go off the general feeling I get around a campaign. The energy, the tactics, the methods. Really is just a vibes-based thing sometimes.

That being said, it would be a huge deal if Olivia Chow is not elected mayor of Toronto on June 26th. All the polls have her ahead, the centre and the right are both split, and no candidate has the raw charisma of a Rob Ford or the unmatchable sexual energy of a John Tory, so this really is Olivia’s to lose.

338 Canada has her chances of winning at just above 99%.

People are drawing comparisons with 2014, but that was a different beast. Doug Ford was being weighed down by his brother’s scandals and John Tory neutralized centre and centre-right opposition, consolidating support from the mushy middle and the Anybody-But-Ford camps. And, while Olivia led some very early polls in 2014, the last poll that showed her winning came in mid-July. Her polling slip actually started before the last big Rob Ford scandal really got going.

This time, she’s consistently in the lead and, aside for some Mainstreet polls (which overinflate Ana Bailão’s support…nobody else has her over 12%, what are you all doing?), she hasn’t dipped below 30% in over a month and hasn’t been behind in a poll since April.

So the conversation has actually moved from “who will be Toronto’s next mayor?” to “are we sure its cool that we have a ballot of 102 candidates and the winner might only win 30% of the vote but get to wield strong mayor powers?”

Indeed, the Canadian Press had a story on Monday where another academic from TMU (Go Bolds! oh, sorry… Go Bolds!) said that the present way of electing our mayors is:

This was followed by a quote from Dennis Pilon, a prof at York, who said:

Oh hell yeah! We’re talking electoral reform at the local level! This is my jam!

(Pump Up The Jam starts playing)

First-past-the-post in single-member districts is a dated and inefficient way of electing people, and can provide us with some really wonky results. Not just for mayors, but for city councillors, too. In Hamilton’s 2022 election, Ward 4 elected councillor Tammy Hwang with 23% of the vote. If we estimate a 34% turnout, that means 7.8% of electors in Ward 4 cast a ballot for their councillor.3 Not exactly a strong mandate from the people.

So let’s take a look at some other ways we can elect local governments, drawing on some real world examples and see what they might look like if we applied them to Hamilton. This will be a mix of facts from around Canada and the world, and some creative speculation to think about how it would apply here.

That last bit is important: the scenarios outlined after describing things are speculative. I use real-world examples and, in some cases, data from Hamilton to create these scenarios, but these are not reflections of any future or past events. Don’t email me or your councillors asking why “those clowns at city hall want to turn us into Iceland or Montreal”. These are thought experiments and are meant to show us that different options are possible.

So, with that, let’s begin!

Rank me!

If you’ve heard about electoral reform in Canada, you’ve probably heard about Ranked Ballots. This system is pretty self-explanatory. Instead of putting a single X beside a candidate’s name, you rank the candidates based on your preference. The lowest ranked candidate is dropped after the first count and has their votes redistributed (everyone who placed them first then has their votes recounted where their second place selection becomes their first) and so on until one candidate gets 50% of the vote.

This system, called Instant Runoff Voting, is used across the country in non-governmental elections. Hell, even the McMaster Student Union uses this method to elect their president. It was how I lost my first big election!4

London, Ontario used this method to elect their city council in 2018 and a few cities in Ontario were poised to join them in 2022 before the provincial government stepped in and forced them to change back to First-Past-The-Post.

This is the system they use in San Francisco. After their incumbent mayor died, the city held a by-election in 2018 where it took 9 rounds to distribute all the votes.

What would this look like if we used ranked choice voting in the 2022 Hamilton mayoral election? This is all speculative, as we don’t know where people would rank candidates, but we can make some guesses.

First off, the threshold that any candidate would need to clear would be 71,030 votes (50% of the total number of votes + 1). The last place candidate was Hermiz Ishaya, so let’s say that his supporters moved some to Michael Pattison as the anti-establishment candidate, some to Bratina since they knew him, and then split the rest between Andrea and Keanin.

Neo-Nazi Paul Fromm is next, and most of his voters will likely drop off. This means they only selected one candidate, spoiling their ballots after that. Some might have backed Convoy preacher Solomon Ikhuiwu, and then the remainder might have thrown their votes to the right leaning candidates.

Then it would go through Jim Davis, Michael Pattison, and Solomon Ikhuiwu. Then we’re left with the big four: Butt, Bratina, Loomis, and Horwath. If Butt’s vote broke heavily for Bratina and Loomis and Bratina’s supporters mainly went for Loomis, despite trailing in the first 6 rounds, he could win.

As I said earlier, this is total speculation. If we had a ranked ballot, candidates would likely try to sweet talk their opponents and those opponents’s supporters in an effort to get them to cast their second ballot for them. Or do what I did and say “oh, why can’t I just vote for all of them?” like a loser.

PROs

• It would encourage candidates playing nice to earn opponent’s votes

• The mayor eventually gets a majority of support, even if it can take a while to calculate

• Smaller candidates might see some of their campaign ideas adopted by bigger candidates to, again, earn those sweet second place votes

CONs

• These systems tend to favour moderates. Leftists would want a centrist over a conservative and conservatives would want a centrist over a leftist. This whole thing tends to churn out candidates in the mushy middle, which begs the question: is this really representative AND this different from now when people do strategic voting?

• There are still clear leaders and, depending on the strength of their campaign, it might be a task to beat them

• All that “playing nice” and “adopting other candidate’s campaign planks” doesn’t mean much if the lead candidate is just doing it during the campaign and then drops it when they get elected

Living left coast: Vancouver Edition

Over in Vancouver, they run their elections a little differently. While they’re held just a few days before ours, they have a few quirks in the system that make their local government very interesting.

First, they have parties. Municipal parties or “elector organizations” have a long history in BC, even if they were only formally codified in provincial law in 1993. One of their parties, the Non-Partisan Association, is actually one of the country’s oldest continuously operating parties, having been formed in 1937.

Second, they do not have any wards. All councillors are elected at-large across the whole city. That means that when Vancouverites go to vote, they elect 10 councillors for the whole city.

Third, they have an elected parks board, which I’ve spoken about at length and will likely keep speaking about. Because it is cool and we need one in Hamilton. Seven members are elected to oversee primarily Stanley Park. That’s beside the point here, but it still is interesting.

Okay, if we wanted to apply that model to Hamilton, it would be pretty easy. Just get rid of the wards and let parties form. Then, when we go to vote, we get to select 10 councillors out of a large pool. This is called plurality block voting. That means that, just like in our current system, a candidate just needs more votes than the 11th highest ranked candidate and they are elected. They do not need a majority. Just the most. But each voter gets 10 votes to distribute among the pool of candidates.

A quick note about their parties: with the exception of the Vancouver Green Party, no party that exists at the local level in Vancouver is affiliated with any provincial or federal party. These are all unique bodies that pretty much do their own thing. Any eligible elector can form a party. When I talk about parties at the local level, Ontarians tend to assume it’ll mean we’ll have Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green, PPC, etc. candidates running for council. In both BC and Quebec, where parties have long been a part of the municipal scene, that doesn’t happen. And, around the world, in places like Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo, and even throughout the UK, there are usually a mix of “branch parties” (local wings of national parties) and distinct local parties (parties that do not run at other levels or outside their municipality).

Vancouver has 6 main parties:

• The Non-Partisan Association: Despite the contradictory name, it is a partisan body. This is the city’s traditional centre-right party, with ties to local business organizations and some right-leaning Liberals and Conservatives. The NPA has had a rough go of it lately, with their internal boards taken over by far-right wing candidates and their 2022 mayoral candidate resigning in disgrace after most of the party’s caucus abandoned the sinking ship. Generally, it is a conservative party.

• A Better City (ABC) Vancouver: A centre to centre-right party founded by disaffected NPA members. They currently form the Vancouver administration, where they’ve started removing cycling infrastructure and cracking down on encampments.

• Forward Together: This was former mayor Kennedy Stewart’s political vehicle. A social democratic party, it sought to elect a “progressive majority” to Vancouver city council, but drew mostly from NDP staffers and affiliated partisans. They threw in a Liberal for good measure, but they were as close to being the Vancouver NDP as possible without calling themselves that.

• Vision Vancouver: This once-dominant party was founded by more moderate members of the city’s former progressive juggernaut, the Coalition of Progressive Electors, or COPE. COPE has always been a difficult beast to tame, dealing with the competing interests of progressives opposed to the NPA. They were founded in 2005 and held power in the city through the office of mayor and with a city council majority from 2008 to 2018. After their leader, mayor Gregor Robertson, stepped down, the party declined in popularity, dropping from holding a majority in 2014 to winning no council seats in 2018. At their height, they could be called a “green/liberal” party. They’re focused on the environment, but approach issues through a liberal (small L) lens.

• OneCity: Spoiler-probably the party I’d vote for in Vancouver. Also founded by former COPE members, OneCity sought to present a professional, polished, unapologetically progressive platform to the people of Vancouver. As a progressive, urbanist party, they’re focused on building new housing, filling in the missing middle, funding harm reduction, promoting active transportation, pursuing real justice for Indigenous communities, etc. Real solid stuff. Basically the Projet Montreal of the west coast.

• The Vancouver Green Party: exactly what it sounds like. They’re the municipal branch of the BC provincial Greens. They have the environment at heart, sometimes vote progressive, sometimes talk up their business cred, sometimes do both. They’re a blend of a left-wing European Green party and a centrist Canadian Green party.

There are other parties (the left-wing VOTE Socialist, the localist and conservative TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, the centrist Affordable Housing Coalition, etc.), but these are the big ones.

Okay, so what if we applied this model to Hamilton’s 2022 election results?

It is a little tough, since voters would have 15 votes instead of 1, but this gives us an idea as to what council would look like.

It would be both the Wilsons for the win! Alex Wilson would be the lead council candidate, having earned the most number of votes of any councillor in the city (have fun being deputy mayor, Alex!). They’d be joined by sitting councillors Maureen Wilson, Tom Jackson, Esther Pauls, JP Danko, Craig Cassar, Nrinder Nann, Matt Francis, Jeff Beattie, Brad Clark, Cameron Kroetsch, and Ted McMeekin. But folks like Scott Duvall, Arlene VanderBeek, and Louie Milojevic would also sit around the council horseshoe.

If we just control C, control V’ed Vancouver’s system and used the same parties, I’d speculate that Alex Wilson, Craig Cassar, Nrinder Nann, and Cameron Kroetsch would all be OneCity councillors, based on voting record and ideological humpf. Maureen Wilson and Ted McMeekin would likely be on the Vision team (even though they have somewhat different policy agendas) given their commitment to the environment and their compassionate liberalism. Scott Duvall would 100% be Forward, thanks to his connections with the NDP. I said JP Danko, Jeff Beattie, and Louie Milojevic would likely be with ABC, given their soft conservatism. The rest would be NPA affiliated, thanks to each of their long-standing positions, their council priorities, and the fact that they each have ties to either the right side of the Liberals or the Conservatives.

That would give us a centre/centre-left majority of OneCity+Vision+Forward. And, of course, this assumes Andrea Horwath would be a Forward candidate, if not a labour-affiliated independent.

PROs

• No more ward-silos and mini fiefdoms; councillors would need to work together across the city to earn support

• Parties would make ideological affiliations clear and speed up a process that, under the current system, is labourious, undirected, and inefficient

• We’d get to select 15 councillors, meaning we can sample of different parties and groups, giving us more choice and different options

CONs

• No more ward-specific issues and no chance your community will have an elected representative looking out for it

• Parties can divide people and turn electors off from participating and, when multiple parties have similar ideals, can split the vote (which is what happened in Vancouver in 2022)

• The at-large thing is just clunky, requiring us to select 15 candidates on one ballot

Living left coast: California Rolls

In Los Angeles (and throughout many cities in the US, France, Brazil, and Türkiye), their mayor is elected using a method called runoff voting. The older cousin to instant runoff voting, this system has two distinct elections: one with a general pool of candidates and a second election (if none of the candidates in the first round earns 50% of the vote) between the top two candidates.

LA has a few extra steps that make for an interesting system. They have term limits that make a candidate ineligible to run for a third term, and they have very strict requirements to even put yourself on the ballot. Their elections are nominally nonpartisan, but almost every candidate campaigns as a quiet Democrat, usually with backing from wings of the party.

Okay, let’s run through the steps on how to get on the ballot in Los Angeles:

1. Gather information from the Los Angeles Ethics Commissioner: A full two years before the election, interested candidates need to start their paperwork by learning all the legal and financial requirements to run.

2. Form an “exploratory committee”: You have to form a committee that will help you navigate the rules and “test the waters” by reaching out to party establishments, donors, people who could give endorsements, etc. This is done in the year leading up to the election.

3. File a “declaration of intent”: Your committee is satisfied that you have a shot of making it onto the ballot. You then have to let the city know you’ll be collecting signatures with the intention of running for mayor. This must be done 120 to 115 days before the vote.

4. Collect signatures of registered voters: Candidates have to collect the signatures of 1,000 registered voters or, if they want to pay a $300 fee, they only need 500 names. This is difficult because folks in California aren’t automatically registered to vote and need to actively submit paperwork to be considered eligible. Candidates might end up gathering signatures from ineligible voters, meaning they usually need to get more than 1,000 names. This must be done three months before the election.

5. Get certified as a candidate by the clerk: The city clerk takes 10 days to check all the names on your list and, if you managed to get 1,000 signatures from registered voters, you’re on the ballot! Of the 27 candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles who filed a “declaration of intent” in 2022, only 12 qualified. That’s 44% of candidates who signaled a serious intention to run.

After making it onto the ballot, you need to survive the rigours of campaigning in the first round. Three candidates couldn’t hack it and suspended their campaigns, even though their names remained on the ballot. Of the 9 who stayed on the ballot, only former Member of Congress Karen Bass and right-leaning billionaire Rick Caruso got over 30% and advanced to the general election.

In France and Brazil, the first and second rounds of voting are squished together, usually a couple of weeks apart. In LA, the first round was held on June 7th and the second round was months later on November 8th. Five months of campaigning in the second round election. Absolutely brutal. Bass eventually won, becoming the first woman to be mayor of Los Angeles.

If we applied this system to Hamilton, we would absolutely see smaller ballots. The time requirement, paperwork, and bureaucratic steps required to even put your name on the ballot would see plenty of drop off through attrition. Would Hermiz Ishaya, Jim Davis, and Michael Pattison make it onto the ballot? Probably not. Fromm and Solomon Ikhuiwu would have struggled to make it past the signature stage, and Ejaz Butt would almost certainly be knocked out in, if not before, the first round.

The LA system, while providing the mayor with a majority mandate, is heavily tipped in the favour of elites. The last time someone without elected office experience was even among the top two candidates was 2001, when the city’s solicitor, James Hahn, was elected mayor. And, even then, he still had deep political connections.

So this system would entirely restrict access to the mayor’s office to people with the connections to clear all the hurdles.

PROs

• More requirements means more serious and credible candidates

• The runoff means that the mayor earns 50% and the extra campaign period gives the top two candidates a chance to make their case to the electorate

• This maintains the nonpartisan system (with shadow parties) that we have now

CONs

• The hurdles that candidates need to clear means this is an elite-driven election

• The long campaign period would be hard on anyone and require massive campaign bank accounts to sustain

• A five month gap between elections means some voters will simply turn off and voter turnout could dip in the second round, making for an unrepresentative sample of voters

Bristol’s working together

Back in May of 2022, the residents of Bristol, a city of about 500,000 in the west of England, voted in a very unique referendum. 10 years earlier, voters in that city decided to start directly electing their mayor, which had not been done in Bristol prior. But, after a decade of that, they all decided it was a better idea to try something new. Nearly 60% of voters decided to scrap the office of mayor altogether.

Well, kinda.

Voters had one of two options in the May 2022 referendum: the Directly-Elected Mayor Model and the Cabinet Model. Voters backed the latter, meaning that the city council will divide itself into committees that will deal with specific issues, lead by chairs, and the whole affair will be overseen by a ceremonial mayor, selected by council. This is a change from the Directly-Elected Mayor Model, where the mayor would appoint seven members of council as their “cabinet”. In theory, this will encourage more cross-party dialogue and a difference of opinions across the city. This is called Government by Committee.

Hamilton actually used this model for a while in the pre-Confederation days. Our first mayor, Colin Ferrie, was elected councillor for St. Mary’s Ward (Strathcona and Central) and then chosen by his colleagues to serve as mayor.

Okay, so what if we adopted the new Bristol Model wholesale?

First thing’s first: they have 35 wards with an average voting population of 10,050 each. The eligible electorate is about 75% of the population, so let’s say each ward has 13,400 residents. If we divided Hamilton’s population by that (569,353/13,400), we’d get about 43 wards.

Bristol’s wards are also mixed, meaning some elect 1 member, some elect 3, but most elect 2. They have a council of 70 members.

Okay, let’s divide Hamilton into 43 wards with 70 members each.

And, in the distance, he heard the anguished cries of the city’s right wing, the prospect of a local government of 70 members poised and ready to be the stuff of their nightmares.

Turns out, Hamilton can be split into 43 wards fairly well. I tried to keep similar communities together and please don’t be hard on me about the names, I know I’m not good at naming electoral districts. Or anything, for that matter. I have a cat named Bill, so let’s just leave it at that.

Most of the wards would have 2 councillors, but a select few only have one to balance everything out.

Hamiltonians would elect councillors in their wards, but not elect a mayor. Then, once council is elected, they’d all sit down together and make some key decisions. They’d elect a mayor, a deputy mayor, and a council leader. The mayor would serve in a ceremonial role, welcoming visitors, attending events, etc. The council leader would chair meetings and coordinate with the committee chairs who would function as the “cabinet”. Each committee would have a few members to coordinate the work.

These committees would be, similar to Bristol, tasked with important issues. These would be things like Finance, Social Services, the Environment, Transportation, Planning, Economic Development, and Intergovernmental Relations.

Key to making the Bristol Model work is, of course, parties. It is easier to coordinate a city-wide campaign in multiple wards electing a legislative body that’s 21% the size of the House of Commons, managing a few cabinet portfolios when you can herd at least a few of the cats in a similar direction.

Okay, pros and cons:

PROs

• It would dramatically decrease the workload for councillors by adding an extra 54 members

• Council would have a clear direction and cabinet positions would guide local priorities in a coherent way

• The divisiveness of a mayoral election wouldn’t get in the way of electing a competent and representative council

CONs

• Holy council of 70 wow. Plus, that council would still be elected using First-Past-The-Post, so this is less “electoral reform” and more “governance reform”

• Not having a mayor means that a large council, polarized around partisan lines, can elect someone Hamiltonians wouldn’t have chosen otherwise

• The cabinet model may make things more adversarial and distract councillors from their duties in their own wards

Montreal-style smoked councils

Alright, on to Montreal. Up in MTL, they have a pretty interesting system that mirrors what our old regional councils used to look like.

There are 103 elected officials across Montreal. There is 1 mayor for the whole city, who sets the policy direction for Montreal as a whole. Then there are 18 borough mayors. These are mayors of distinct regions in the city. They serve both on Montreal City Council and as the mayor of their borough, leading that specific community’s borough council. A borough council deals with the planning issues, waste management, parks, etc. in their own community. It gives the distinct boroughs of Montreal a little more autonomy, while still connecting them to the larger city. Then there are 46 members of Montreal City Council elected across MTL. These city councillors also sit on their borough council. But, in some areas, they have special borough councillors. There are 38 of them. These are folks who only sit on their community’s local council and do not go to Montreal City Council with their borough mayor and city councillor colleagues. This is called soft devolution, as it gives communities some autonomy while still connecting them to the larger municipality.

If we divided Hamilton up this way, we might have a scenario where we get a city of 9 distinct communities. Each of these communities would have their own “mayor”, who would serve as the chair of their community council and serve on Hamilton City Council.

So that’s already 10 members of council (1 City Mayor and 9 Community Mayors). There would then be 25 City Councillors. Flamborough-Waterdown, Dundas-Wentworth, Ancaster, and Binbrook-Mount Hope each get one. Stoney Creek gets 2. There are 4 for the South Mountain, and 5 each for the North Mountain, West Hamilton, and East Hamilton.

But just because the smaller communities have less representation on City Council doesn’t mean they don’t have some degree of local autonomy. Each community would get borough councillors of varying numbers to give them a robust local democracy. The larger parts of “old Hamilton” would only have city councillors who would also serve on the community council. But the small communities would have a few borough councillors and a few city councillors as their local decision making body.

That gives us a total local government size of 73 people. It expands the size of government, but gives local communities their own unique representation and a venue in which residents can set the direction of their own community, as well as have a say in the overall direction of the city.

PROs

• This gives some power back to formerly independent municipalities and gives parts of the “old city” a chance to set their own direction

• Having community/borough councillors creates a pool of potential city council candidates, ensuring a steady supply of proven leaders ready to step up

• Creating more council wards takes the burden off sitting councillors and ensures more hands-on representation, especially since you’d have 2 mayors and at least two folks on council representing your area

CONs

• The expanded size of council will inevitably cost money and might make decision-making harder

• Creating community councils might give the city a disjointed feel, with people in one community possibly, for example, opposing any new housing or restricting where social services can be located

• This, again, doesn’t change the voting system from First-Past-The-Post, though it does give residents more offices to vote for, which, by itself, can be confusing

Hast du etwas Zeit für Berlin?

While ranked ballots may be familiar to Canadians, one other system that we have likely heard of is the oft-mentioned Mixed Member Proportional system or MMP. This particular system combines the current one we have with a little extra proportional twist to even things out.

While this isn’t used in many places for municipal elections, it is how they choose Berlin’s local government. Germany is the home base for MMP, as it is used across the country at multiple levels. And, a quick note, Berlin is a city state. So the mayor of Berlin is also their version of a Premier.

Berlin is a massive city with a population of nearly 3.7 million, so their council of 159 doesn’t seem that big. That’s 23,270 residents per elected official, which is close to the number of constituents per Hamilton councillor right now. But 51% of the seats in the Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus come from the party list.

Let’s break down how their system works to understand this. In MPP, you get two votes. One vote is for your local councillor, who will represent a ward as usual. The second vote is for the “party list”. The party list is key to determining the number of seats a party gets. It is a more accurate reflection of what the electorate wants. So if a major party like the Liberals or the Tories clean up in the regular seats but smaller parties have a higher percent of the party vote, people from those small party’s lists will be added to council to make things more proportional. Hence the mixed in “mixed member proportional”.

I know, I know, this one is a tad confusing. So let’s apply it to Hamilton to show you what it could look like.

If we used this system in Hamilton, the ballot might look something like this:

There would be 15 wards, as usual, and we’d add 15 seats to be allocated through the party list.

When we go to vote, we mark our two boxes, and wait for the count. Just a note: you do not need to vote for the same party twice. Many Germans will vote for their favourite constituency rep and then vote for a different party to give them a little boost. Parties do not need to run in constituencies to run a list and constituency candidates can also be included on a party list, so they still get a seat even if they lose in their constituency.

Alright, the results come in and we have a pretty expected split. The Liberals and Conservatives had candidates elected across the city, the urbanist progressive Urban Alliance won in Wards 13, 1, and 2, and the Labour Party won in Wards 3 and 4. Like how I’m mixing it up!?

Under this scenario the Tories picked up 26% of the constituency votes city wide, but only earned 18% of the party vote. That means their seat count is super inflated. If there were only 15 seats, they’d have 6, despite their losing the popular vote.

The Greens and the Socialist Alliance, on the other hand, couldn’t get any councillors elected in constituencies, but earned 9 and 5% of the party vote. To balance things out, we get to do some fun math. Yeah, math can be fun when its about elections.

In order to make things more proportional, the 15 “list” seats are distributed to every party that won more then 5% of the vote based on how “disproportionate” their seat count is after the constituency votes are counted. The Conservatives already have more seats than their party vote, so they don’t get any. But Labour and the Urban Alliance have 13.3% and 12% fewer seats than their vote count, so they are allocated 5 and 4 list seats respectively. The Greens get 3, the Socialist Front gets 2, and the Liberals get 1. Suddenly, a wildly disproportionate council gets balanced out.

Thus, we get a council where both constituency results and party results even things out.

Under this scenario, we could see a Labour/Urban Alliance/Green coalition, which could be interesting.

Ultimately, MMP has some confusing elements and doesn’t achieve perfect proportionality, but it comes way closer than the current system while still giving people a local representative to deal with ward-level issues.

PROs

• A proportional council with local representatives would be a better reflection of what Hamiltonians actually voted for

• Smaller groups would have an easier time getting people elected on the list, diversifying council and giving more of a voice to those often left out

• As with a few of these systems, there would be no direct mayoral election, meaning, again, the divisiveness of a mayoral election wouldn’t get in the way of electing a competent and representative council

CONs

• MMP is confusing to many people. The math and the double vote are things we don’t normally deal with, which would take some getting used to

• Again, we’re back to parties. This system only works if there are parties. I may think that’s a good thing, but many people would oppose that

• The ability for small parties to win means that fringe candidates might sneak in

Það er alltaf gaman í Reykjavík!

Reykjavík is a really fascinating city. The largest city in Iceland, it is home to over 1/3 of all people in the country. A thriving arts scene, a distinct and welcoming culture, and a major tourist destination, there’s something for everyone in Reykjavík (this section was not sponsored by the Icelandic tourism bureau, but totally could be wink wink…free trip to Iceland would do it!).

The city’s government is elected using my favourite system: open party list proportional representation. AIR HORN SOUNDS. This system combines the proportionality of a conventional PR system with the important personal choice that allows you a say in who gets elected. Unlike with most MMP systems, the party list is not selected before hand by party higherups, instead giving voters a choice over which party rep they want. A party isn’t required to field a full list, but they limit their chances if they don’t.

And, of course, in this system, the party leader becomes mayor if they manage to get elected.

In Reykjavík, national parties contest their local elections, providing some consistency throughout the electoral system. Some unique local parties do run, the coolest of which was the satirical Besti flokkurinn, or Best Party.

Created by comedian Jón Gnarr, the party brought together artists, activists, and people disillusioned with the system after the 2008 financial crisis brought Iceland to the brink of ruin. They ran on a nonsense platform (participating in corruption more openly in the name of transparency, bringing a polar bear to the city zoo, giving out free towels at public pools), but also had some excellent points about holding those responsible for the crisis accountable and listening to women and the elderly.

And they won the 2010 election. They formed a municipal government with the Social Democratic Alliance, but only after making them watch every season of The Wire with them.

But, as of 2022, only national-level parties are represented on Reykjavík City Council.

Reykjavík has a population of just under 140,000 and a council of 23. That works out to about 6082 people per councillor. If we divided Hamilton’s population by that (569,353/6,082), we’d get about 93 councillors. Even for me, that’s too many. Let’s say one councillor for every 19,000 residents, giving us a council of 30. And the whole city would be an “electoral district”, meaning all 30 councillors would represent all Hamiltonians.

First off, our ballots would change and look something like this:

Don’t let the sheer number of names distract you: you still only tick one box. Find the name of the candidate from the party you prefer, and tick that name. One vote, nice and simple.

Then the fun begins.

To run the scenario, I took the results from each Hamilton-area riding from the 2015, 2019, and 2021 Federal elections and the 2018 and 2022 Provincial elections, averaged them out and smashed them together.

In Reykjavík, a party needs to clear 5% of the vote to earn seats on council, but, for our purposes, I’ve bumped that down to 4% because the Green vote in 2021 dragged the whole average down.

If that’s the case, 4 parties clear the bar: the NDP, Liberals, Tories, and Greens. The NDP would be the largest party on council (and it would be easy to see a scenario where Andrea Horwath would be their lead candidate and, thus, mayor), but, even if they worked with the Greens, they’d still be 3 seats short of a majority. We’d have a council minority, where councillors would need to work across party lines to get things done.

Cool, right? Sure, if we used this system, we’d likely have different results, unique local parties, and very different dynamics, but this gives you an idea as to how the council could be elected. Other countries use different ways of allocating seats, there are different thresholds, and we could even break the city into smaller districts that elect 5 to 7 members a piece.

PROs

• Proportionality means the will of Hamiltonians would be reflected in the council

• The openness of the lists gives many candidates a chance of winning

• Like with some of the other systems, the divisiveness of a separate mayoral election wouldn’t get in the way of electing a competent and representative council

CONs

• We’d have to entirely reorient how people view local politics in Hamilton by adding parties and abolishing our wards

• PR systems do let fringe candidates in (as noted with MMP), meaning we could have a cool, progressive council working together on important issues, and one right wing populist in the corner rambling about vaccines and the globalists and throwing everything off

• Hard to say if existing parties would want to participate, given Canadian political culture, but it is possible that they would and further divide the electorate

Wrap it up, nerd

What an adventure through some possible alternative electoral and governance models! And I didn’t even get into Washington D.C.’s Advisory Neighbourhood Commissions!

Will Hamilton ever implement these options? No! Well, at least not for the foreseeable future.

The province controls how we elect our councils, even if the law technically gives municipalities a little choice. But remember: the current provincial government loves to meddle in local affairs. Do you think if Hamilton went to the province and asked for a party-list PR style of government, they’d listen? This is the government that took away London, Ontario’s ranked ballots, despite evidence they worked well, on the grounds that the voters were just too gosh darn confused by the whole thing. And we punished Doug Ford and the Tories by…returning them to office with an increased supermajority.

While we may not be allowed to change our voting system or way we run council, one thing is for certain: we can't stop pushing for change. To increase resident satisfaction with local democracy (and, thus, turnout), we should make sure that as many people as possible feel like their votes count. That means a proportional system or one where a majority is ensured.

But it also means some other things. Extending voting rights to non-citizen residents. Lowering the voting age to 16. Making it easier to cast a ballot. More polling stations. More awareness around our elections. Making election day a holiday. Adding more members to council to create more proportional wards. And more engagement with the electorate in between elections.

All of those options give us an idea as to how people around the world elect their councils. We should not be afraid to dream big and imagine a city government that works better. That works for all of us.

Larry Lanes

Larry Di Ianni was first elected to Stoney Creek City Council as alderman for Ward 5 in 1982. He would serve in office over the next 24 years as a Stoney Creek alderman/councillor, Hamilton councillor, and finally Hamilton’s mayor, after which point he’d suffer three major electoral defeats in four years and, after the final defeat - placing 2nd in the 2010 mayoral race - he would retire from active electoral politics.

He has remained an active commentator in the city’s politics to this day (see last year’s “council has gone way left” comments that were very wrong).

His Twitter account garnered some attention a few days ago for this observation:

Like the constant parade of Spec letter writers, neighbourhood Facebook group commenters, and grumpy uncles, the old argument is once again trotted out, brought for a little jaunt around the track to remind the reactionaries of its simplistic grace: “I don’t see anyone using this piece infrastructure at this exact moment, so, therefore, no one uses it ever, and it is a waste. Yes, I am very smart.”

Why might Larry be making this comment? Past precedent sure doesn’t indicate he’s opposed to spending public money on cycling infrastructure.

On June 16, 2004, Di Ianni, as mayor, voted in favour of the Public Works report that earmarked $516,000 for new cycling infrastructure, including bike lanes on Sterling, Hunter, King East, Upper Paradise, Stone Church, and the lift bridge, as well as the separated lanes on King West from Paradise to Macklin.

Then, on April 12, 2006, when Council received the report from the Public Works Committee which included the recommendation from planning staff that bike lanes be installed on York Boulevard, Di Ianni again showed no objections and voted with the whole council to accept the report.

Okay, so during his term as mayor, he voted in favour of cycling infrastructure. Why the change of heart? Or, at least, why the vocal opposition right now?

Could it be that bike lanes are becoming a hot urban culture war talking point? Toronto mayoral contenders Mark Saunders and Anthony Furey are both campaigning on ripping out cycling infrastructure. Vancouver’s hard right ABC council is pulling up bike lanes in favour of more space for cars (which has drawn major backlash and will almost inevitably bite them in the asses in 2026).

See, as Dave Shellnutt (The Biking Lawyer) told Toronto Life:

The line I’ve highlighted is very important. So we shall say it louder for the folks in the back (so to speak).

Being anti-bike lane isn’t a policy position. It is the absence of a policy position masquerading as a solution to every problem we face.

Its like saying “You’re struggling. Your family is struggling. Life is getting harder. I hear you and I understand you. That’s why, as your leader, I will blow up the moon and clear up the night sky for hardworking taxpayers.”

Could this be a bitter former politico griping about nothing? Maybe. Could it be part of a larger conservative strategy to start attacking scapegoats instead of dealing with the real issues we face? Also maybe. Could it be both. Now that seems more like it.

Consider the situation we face: the cost of housing is prohibitive, inflation is skyrocketing, all the fragile little systems we have in place are cracking, the planet is heating up beyond our worst nightmares, and everyone is really, really, really tense (to the point where more and more signs are going up in businesses and offices reminding people that “abuse will not be tolerated” as if that was something that needed to be said).

Our political class has, for years, punted the problems down the road (is using a sports reference during Pride Month homophobic?). The pandemic made it impossible to ignore these things anymore. But those same old politicians, the ones who were first elected in 1982, have spent so long avoiding any deep consideration of the systemic nature of the issues we face or actually dealing with the problems early on, that they now find themselves utterly incapable of solving our problems.

But, rather than let go of power and allow a new group of folks who aren’t jaded and cynical and smarmy try to solve these things, they’re digging in their heels and pointing at everything they can to distract from their own miserable failures in the past. Bike lanes, trans folks, the queer community overall, Justin Trudeau, scientists, Jewish people, immigrants, deadbeat tenants, people living in encampments, the list could honestly go on forever. We’re all just scapegoats so tired old politicians don’t need to reckon with the fact that the system they were in charge of is collapsing. And a whole new generation of politicos like DeSantis and Poilievre and Furey and every other weird new right winger are positioning themselves to step right into their shoes and keep pointing at nothing, enriching themselves and lubing up the gears of business while they’re at it. The old timers might be gone, but we’re here to play their greatest hits! The shittiest right wing populist cover band ever.

Larry’s snarky tweet really only tells us one thing: we can’t rely on the politicians of the past to fix the problems they chose to ignore when they were in power. And we can’t fall for that same old schtick, even if it is coming from a polished new politico. It is time for a new politics.

We deserve that. Real policy, real solutions, and really cool new bike lanes.

Cool Facts for Cool People

• MP Lisa Hepfner (Liberal - Hamilton Mountain [but really Oakville]) is the only MP in the Hamilton area who is a landlord. The folks over at The Maple have released their annual “Is your MP a landlord?” list, and Hepfner is the only Hamilton MP on the list. Other fun facts: 46% of the Conservative caucus has real estate ties, compared to 39% for the Liberals, 16% for the NDP, and a staggering 100% for the Greens. 43% of Ontario’s MPs have real estate involvement, which is extremely troubling. Both Elizabeth May and Pierre Poilievre are landlords, and PM Trudeau owns non-residential real estate, because of course. Guess we know why there isn’t any action on the housing front! Check out The Maple’s database and analysis here.

• Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie has finally launched her Ontario Liberal Party leadership bid. And, bafflingly, she’s the frontrunner? After walking back her comments about needing to move the party to the right, she’s running on a paper thin platform that includes the line: “We need a government that encourages business and entrepreneurship instead of advancing insiders and cronies.” Sure. If Crombie wins and pushes the Liberals rightward, she’ll be gambling that people really want right-wing politics and not that people are still dramatically uninspired by the Ontario Liberal Party. Does no one consider that maybe people want to be excited by politics anymore? Like, people flock to politicians who make bold and dramatic statements about change. Crombie’s out here offering the policy equivalent of a suburban office park off the QEW. Man, I can’t be the only Ontarian who believes we deserve better politics than this.

• Toronto mayoral candidate and King City resident Chris Saccoccia (aka Chris Sky) has been arrested after allegedly uttering death threats. To borrow a line from someone commenting on the r/Toronto post about this: its always the ones you most suspect. Sky is the anti-lockdown extremist, anti-Semite, conspiracy theorist, and daddy’s little millionaire who opposes 15 Minute Cities for no coherent reason. He’s previously been charged with uttering threats, so this is really standard behaviour. Interestingly, based on Robert O. Paxton’s criteria, that also makes him a fascist. The populist rhetoric is one thing, but it is the use and glorification of violence that pushes someone into fascist territory. Also fun fact: while in Toronto this weekend, I got caught in a pro-Chris Sky, anti-everything rally that illegally took over Yonge Street. The person on the megaphone kept saying things like “COVID is devil, Satan comes to take us, digital ID is demon”. They then merged with an anti-trans rally happening because I guess that’s the world we live in today.