Local group pushing for “Ranked Choice Voting”
Posted Sep 22, 2014 03:38:36 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA – A local group in Ottawa is pushing for a change in the way we vote when it comes to municipal elections.
Ottawa 123 wants the city to adopt a system called ranked choice voting, claiming it would improve the quality of Ottawa’s democracy.
“Instead of putting an “X” next to your preferred candidate, you actually get to rank your preferred candidate first choice, second choice, third choice,” Colum Grove-White with Ottawa 123 told Talk to the Hand on 1310News.
“At the end of the day when the ballots are counted, if a first choice has at least 50 per cent of the vote, then that candidate wins,” Grove-White explained.
Grove-White says that if no first choice candidate received at least 50 per cent of the vote, then the candidate with the least first choice votes would be automatically eliminated. If that candidate was your first choice, your vote would go to your second choice.
The first candidate with at least 50 per cent of the vote would win.
Twenty-seven candidates in Ottawa already support the system, including Mayor Jim Watson.
Multiple cities in the United States already use the ranked choice system, as well as cities in England and Australia.
The group advocates the change at the municipal level for the 2018 election.
