Ontario municipal elections, (October 27, 2014) - Master thread

[Citizen Hats]

The Star is not a partisan Liberal paper. They're a left-liberal paper, much in the same sense that the G&M is a right-liberal one

[Citizen Hats]

I find it utterly bizarre that the parts of Toronto which managed to elect a Liberal MP in 2011, with the exception of Centre, all voted for Doug Ford.  Your suburban Liberals are weird, Ontario

[Citizen Hats]

How could I forget about the marvelous Carolyn Bennett? Shame, shame

[Citizen Hats]

Canada truly is a beautiful mosaic, isn't it?

I'll take the occasional Doug Ford over the immigrant bashing competition found in many European capitals

[Citizen Hats]

ha! you easterners and your ward systems.  I'v really grown to appreciate at-large voting

[Citizen Hats]

This seems as good a place as any to mention my proposed new ward boundaries for Toronto.

• 44 Ward map - freeze existing number of wards
• 50 Ward map - split each new federal electoral district in half - add six additional wards

Great stuff, Krago.

Personally, I support 100 wards for Toronto. But I'm slightly crazy.

I prefer more wards. Its crazy in Halifax; we have more MLAs than we do city councilors!

It's the same story in Calgary; we have 25 MLAs but only 14 city councillors

It's the same in Edmonton and Winnipeg as well.

ha! you easterners and your ward systems.  I'v really grown to appreciate at-large voting

I think I've mentioned this to you before, but at-large voting systems (especially partisan ones) are probably the least democratic voting systems. Imagine if Canada had a 308 MP at large voting system? We'd end up with 300 Tory MPs! Somehow Vancouver has made it work, though.

If Vancouver wants to continue eschewing wards, it should adopt STV.

I agree that STV would be a superior electoral system for Vancouver.  In the context of Vancouver, I prefer the existing at-large system over the ward system because the ward system encourages parochialism that I think is destructive to getting things done in a city (Scarborough for Scarberians!).  On the scale of a city, this petty nonesense is so much less justifiable than it is on the scale of a province or a country.  The geography is too great for it to work, versus a ten member city council for a relatively small area

[Citizen Hats]

Yeah, a ward system would be better for working class representation in Vancouver, where there are no census tracts east of Cambie or Main that exceed the metro's average income. 

Toronto has more of a central corridor/periphery divide rather than east/west.  Interestingly I think in every other Ontario city there's a east-west split with the west side being more affluent and the east side more working class (i.e. Ottawa, Kingston, Hamilton, London).

Ottawa is more like Toronto in that regard. Sure, parts of the "east end" are historically poor neighbourhoods, but we have clusters of poor neighbourhoods throughout the city, much like Toronto.

The problem with the "at-large" system in Vancouver historically is that the turnout is always much higher from the wealthy western parts of the city than from the poorer eastern parts - and as a result you end up with a city council almost entirely composed of people who represent the rich areas where people tend to tur out. If you have a ward based system then then  east end gets a councillor - whether the turnout there is 30% or 80%

Indeed, and I think STV would not help this part. One of the few benefits of first past the post is that it allows for lower turnout areas to be equally represented to higher turnout areas.

Another problem with Vancouver is it's city council is obscenely small. Having just 10 councillors represent such a world famous city is beyond ridiculous.

I wouldn't put 1 for every 58,000 people down as such a terrible number, though it perhaps could be larger.  And when we're talking about 'working class' representation, remember that candidates backed by the east side win frequently enough - Robertson, Campbell, Harcourt, Phillips

[Citizen Hats]

It should be noted that if we were to amagamate to the extent to which Toronto has, in rough density terms, I imagine we would annex Burnaby and New Westminster.  Both of these cities are ancient strongholds of the NDP