Should Kingston change the way its mayor and councillors are elected or stick with the status quo?

Voters will have their say when the issue is put to a referendum in this fall’s municipal election. Staff have come up with the final wording of the ballot question, subject to council’s final endorsement. It reads:

“Are you in favour of using Ranked Ballot Voting to elect the Mayor and District Councillors in the City of Kingston? Yes. No.”

Councillors held a special meeting Feb. 6 to endorse the question based on staff’s advice that it meets the criteria for being clear, concise and neutral. The deadline to approve the referendum bylaw is March 1 in order for it to appear on the ballot in the Monday, Oct 22 election.

The referendum idea stems from a provincial policy introduced last year. The Ontario government brought in changes to the election law that allow the ranked ballot system as an option for municipalities in deciding how civic leaders are elected.

Kingston councillors believe the issue is too important for them alone to decide, so the issue will be put to voters. Staff spent the past few months trying to educate voters on what it is they’ll be voting on, and how the ranked ballot system works.

One question voters want to know now is, ‘How much will ranked balloting cost taxpayers?’

Staff estimate the ranked balloting will cost an extra $220,000 for additional equipment, staffing, training and public education, boosting the overall election budget to about one million dollars. While some of those expenses are considered one-time, other expenses are needed for ongoing services such as the need for vote counting equipment.

Kingston is basing a lot of its estimates on the experience of London – the only Ontario municipality that is moving ahead with ranked ballot voting (RBV) to elect candidates.

While staff did not wade into the pros and cons of the debate, they did attempt to answer some public questions based on provincial input.

“There is no evidence that RBV increases voter turnout. The London report noted that there was no relation between RBV and increased voter turnout in other jurisdictions outside of Canada that used RBV.”

Still, the province says ranked balloting has the potential to give voters a greater say in who is elected and increase voter engagement.

Unlike the traditional first-past-the-post election system – where the candidate with the most votes wins – ranked ballots require the winner to have at least 50-percent of the vote.

Instead of one check mark on the ballot, voters can rank the candidates in order of preference. That means there may be multiple rounds of counting before a candidate is declared the winner.

If there’s no 50-percent-plus-one vote winner after the first round of counting, the last place candidate is eliminated and those votes are redistributed to the other candidates. The counting continues until a clear winner emerges. So if your first place candidate isn’t elected, your ballot may help your second choice to win.

City officials say ranked balloting will not apply to the election of school board trustees since school districts often cross municipal boundaries.

Staff had to refine the preliminary question – ‘Are you in favour of using ranked ballot voting to elect the Mayor and Councillors in the City of Kingston beginning with the 2022 municipal election?’ – following recent consultation.

The preliminary wording caused some confusion among councillors who complained that it sounded too much like voters are being asked to decide whether they want to elect their councillors at-large rather than by the current system of districts – a system that is not changing.

The threshold to legitimize a referendum result is high. In order for the results to be binding at least 50 percent of eligible voters must vote on the question and more than 50 percent of the votes on the question must be in favour of using ranked ballot voting. If it’s adopted, the earliest Kingston could implement the electoral change is during the next municipal vote in 2022.

Kingston’s referendum can only be appealed based on the grounds the question is not considered to be clear, concise and neutral or not capable of being answered in the affirmative or negative.

The last time a referendum question was placed on the ballot was in 2014 when voters rejected a casino in Kingston by a two-to-one margin.