It is surprising that only 102 people signed on to be mayor of Toronto, in this by-election. There are probably some people in the also-ran category who would make a pretty good mayor. Hey, I would run but I don’t want to waste the $200. I know that elections are fun. Campaigning is second nature with me. It is just that there would be very few people at my age in the race.
But it is not a bloated ballot. There are people who sincerely want to help. They have solutions for our city that should be listened to. My biggest laugh is in imagining marking a ranked ballot with 102 candidates on it. It is mind boggling. It would be mining the middle ground for sure. There were only 30 some candidates in the race when I wrote my morning line. Handicapping the top ten was difficult enough at that time. A ranked ballot with 102 names would be nothing but a name-recognition game.
To try to rank a ballot with that many names on it would be a disaster. It would probably end up electing someone with a name, voters are generally confident they could pronounce.
I guess I can never argue against ranked ballots enough. If there are only five or six candidates, most ranked ballots are counted once and the winner is declared. The result is the same as first-past-the-post.
It is when you have ten or more people on the ballot that you are in danger of mining down to the least obnoxious candidate that very few people voted for as number one. What you have done through ranking is bring up the candidate who most voters rated as number three or four. It is when those voters realize how few wanted the person in the first go-around, there is dissention in the ranks.
With the conservative party proving my point in two out of three of their last leadership contests, it is hard to believe that the liberals in Ontario chose to use a ranked ballot. That is stupid following the dumb.
But when you charge a $100,000 entrance fee, it is hard to believe that more than a few potential candidates would be interested.
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