People who were elected the last election with less than a third of the vote in their ward:
James Pasternak Ward 10 - 19%
Frank Di Giorgio Ward 12 - 27%
John Parker Ward 26 - 31%
Kristyn Wong-Tam Ward 27 - 28%
Gary Crawford Ward 36 - 25%
That's disgusting and IRV would have been better in those cases.
Everyone else got even fewer first choice votes you realize right? Is everyone disgusting as a representative then? Splintered wards will remain splintered wards no matter what the voting system is. The problem isn't that no one got more than 50% of the vote. The problem is that a lot of voters vote in
significant numbers for people that don't get elected and their points of view don't get reflected in the makeup of the governing body that is supposed to represent them.
All IRV does in these cases is make it *seem* like there's a consensus among the voters when there absolutely isn't while the results remain broadly similar.
Look let's take the James Pasternak case. What if after five rounds of counting he ends up winning. Does that make his victory any more legitimate? It's the exact same situation as before. Or alternatively let's say after four rounds of counting some candidate who was the actual first choice of only 11% of the voters squeezed through with 50+1. Does that mean that this candidate somehow magically gets the ability to represent everyone (even though only 11% actually want him and 49% absolutely don't)? It merely seems better in some ways but the real problem (that very many voters are not represented on council by who they really want) remains unsolved.
It doesn't even have anything to do with the Mayoral election (although I think it should follow the same rules).
A single office position like Mayor is a completely different situation than a representative body and they absolutely shouldn't follow the same rules. A representative body is supposed to represent the diversity of the voting body (which is something a single person obviously cannot do) and there are voting rules that can make that happen. Different positions, different responsibilities, different solutions.
How would STV work in a Toronto Municipal Election? Are you suggesting that all 44 wards be lumped together in order for STV to actually work?
STV works by electing multiple people from within a district. So the ridings would be larger than FPTP ridings of course but they certainly don't need to as large as the whole city.
In very dense areas of the city such as Wong Tams you could combine the wards so that seven candidates would get elected from
onecompetition in the larger area as opposed to seven separate smaller elections. Other areas would be split up so that five candidates would be elected from the area and for particularly sparse areas (such as the outer suburbs) the entire area would elect three. Typically three and five candidates per area is the standard with very dense areas going to seven. Obviously the larger the number of winners per competition the more proportional it would be but even 3 is a huge improvement than the current situation.
Because what this does is that voters that are a minority in their region have a chance of banding together and at least electing 1 of 3, or maybe 2 of 5 of the representatives instead of getting jack squat. Etobicoke would start representing more of it's lefty citizens while downtown would represent more of it's right wing ones. That's healthy. Not IRV manufacturing a compromise candidate out of a formula in a few cases while returning the same damn candidates as FPTP in most.
