This is the second of two articles on municipal governance. So what is it that the province wants your opinion on (concerning municipal elections)? You can check out the website for yourself and I address the critical issues below. There are several housekeeping issues such as advanced voting and special ballots. Also, it seems that councillors can serve without having any training concerning their role as public officials.But the contentious issues that are raised for debate concern three things: (1) declaration of political parties on the ballot, (2) the use of a run-off or ranked ballot to establish 50% support for a successful candidate, and (3) recall legislation to remove a very unpopular politician. Some of these have easy answers. Others not so much...Putting a political party on the ballot would actually help voters who wish to identify a candidate’s political philosophy, if that is not clear from their campaign literature. The difficulty with this change is whether it goes beyond just self-identifying. Will each political party actually have a riding association to choose a single candidate for mayor? And similarly to pick a single candidate in each ward? If not, then presumably candidates can pick their own affiliation or declare as ‘Independent.’ Having several conservative-minded candidates self-identify as UCP or CPC or PPC would not be helpful. More likely, we would still have 28 (yes 28, not 27 or 29) 'Independent' candidates for mayor. In a Westminster-style of government you need political parties to be able to form a government. Even though Calgary has more people than Newfoundland, should we have 40 councillors and a party system to elect a city council? This maybe more reform than Calgarians can handle.Using some system of run-off procedure to determine the candidate with the most overall support is a no-brainer. It seems like having 28 candidates for mayor shows a bit of disrespect for the entire electoral process. It is even worse in Toronto where there were 106 candidates in their last election. One way of thinning the ranks would be to make the hurdle for candidacy a bit higher. So a deposit of $50K and signatures of 5,000 electors (instead of the current $1K and five electors) would likely eliminate all but the serious contenders. Running for mayor shouldn’t be some sort of vanity project to feed the egos of people who are either not serious or realistic.Even then, fewer candidates doesn’t necessarily ensure that any candidate will get more than 50% of the votes. In the 2021 election, only one of the winning Calgary candidates, Peter Demong, got more than 50% (65.57%) of the votes. Seven winning candidates won with less than 35% and three candidates got less than 30%. Terry Wong was the lowest winner with only 25.41%. This means that except for one ward, more people did not want the successful candidate to be elected, than did. Even the mayor had more votes against her than for her, by 10% points. So a ranked ballot is an easy solution. Voters will have to go from marking an ‘X’ beside one candidate to putting a ranking number beside several candidates. It should be easy.Enhancing recall for unpopular politicians would also help get rid of problems. Or would it? The current rule is a petition signed by 40% of eligible voters even though only 46% of eligible voters even bothered to vote in Calgary last time. This is an impossible hurdle even if polling shows that 60% or more people are unhappy. Dropping the percentage to say, 10% of actual voters from the last election, would not help that much as it would mean that 38,000 people would need to sign the petition to recall our current mayor. People will barely even get out to vote let alone organize and engage in an active recall.But there may be easier ways to collect ballots, for example using the internet so long as it is accompanied by rigorous security measures. The generation coming up does everything on their phones, so if we want them to eventually be part of the democratic process we will need a voting app with ‘rewards’. Otherwise, they will just look at TikTok to see who should win without actually being bothered to vote. If we don’t make voting as easy as ‘Skip the Dishes,' we will lose a whole generation of voters.So what is the best solution for solving our electoral woes? More democracy. We need to have municipal elections every two years.I can already hear the wailing from people who really don’t like democracy. They should be happy that we aren’t like Australia where it is illegal to not vote. People who don’t support democracy or actively undermine it should be the only ones who suffer for unwise electoral decisions. For example, only the 45% of voters who selected Mayor Gondek should have to pay the current proposed 8% tax increase on top of 5% increase last year. This sounds fair to me. But I digress.There is also the objection that two elections would cost a lot more. Well, the way to solve that is to do every other municipal election at the same time as the provincial election. This will complicate things a bit as there will be more ballots, but this isn’t insurmountable. Also, this will allow both the province and the cities to do more direct democracy via referendums. Why don’t we try this as soon as we can? I would suggest the next municipal election should be in May of 2025, or in a year and a half. Then the next one after that would be with the provincial election in May of 2027. The other upside is you don’t need recall legislation as voters will only need to wait a few months to change out a truly unpopular city official.So check out the website for yourself. And remember to tell the province in the comments to institute biannual municipal elections. Democracy can solve lots of issues.William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.
This is the second of two articles on municipal governance. So what is it that the province wants your opinion on (concerning municipal elections)? You can check out the website for yourself and I address the critical issues below. There are several housekeeping issues such as advanced voting and special ballots. Also, it seems that councillors can serve without having any training concerning their role as public officials.But the contentious issues that are raised for debate concern three things: (1) declaration of political parties on the ballot, (2) the use of a run-off or ranked ballot to establish 50% support for a successful candidate, and (3) recall legislation to remove a very unpopular politician. Some of these have easy answers. Others not so much...Putting a political party on the ballot would actually help voters who wish to identify a candidate’s political philosophy, if that is not clear from their campaign literature. The difficulty with this change is whether it goes beyond just self-identifying. Will each political party actually have a riding association to choose a single candidate for mayor? And similarly to pick a single candidate in each ward? If not, then presumably candidates can pick their own affiliation or declare as ‘Independent.’ Having several conservative-minded candidates self-identify as UCP or CPC or PPC would not be helpful. More likely, we would still have 28 (yes 28, not 27 or 29) 'Independent' candidates for mayor. In a Westminster-style of government you need political parties to be able to form a government. Even though Calgary has more people than Newfoundland, should we have 40 councillors and a party system to elect a city council? This maybe more reform than Calgarians can handle.Using some system of run-off procedure to determine the candidate with the most overall support is a no-brainer. It seems like having 28 candidates for mayor shows a bit of disrespect for the entire electoral process. It is even worse in Toronto where there were 106 candidates in their last election. One way of thinning the ranks would be to make the hurdle for candidacy a bit higher. So a deposit of $50K and signatures of 5,000 electors (instead of the current $1K and five electors) would likely eliminate all but the serious contenders. Running for mayor shouldn’t be some sort of vanity project to feed the egos of people who are either not serious or realistic.Even then, fewer candidates doesn’t necessarily ensure that any candidate will get more than 50% of the votes. In the 2021 election, only one of the winning Calgary candidates, Peter Demong, got more than 50% (65.57%) of the votes. Seven winning candidates won with less than 35% and three candidates got less than 30%. Terry Wong was the lowest winner with only 25.41%. This means that except for one ward, more people did not want the successful candidate to be elected, than did. Even the mayor had more votes against her than for her, by 10% points. So a ranked ballot is an easy solution. Voters will have to go from marking an ‘X’ beside one candidate to putting a ranking number beside several candidates. It should be easy.Enhancing recall for unpopular politicians would also help get rid of problems. Or would it? The current rule is a petition signed by 40% of eligible voters even though only 46% of eligible voters even bothered to vote in Calgary last time. This is an impossible hurdle even if polling shows that 60% or more people are unhappy. Dropping the percentage to say, 10% of actual voters from the last election, would not help that much as it would mean that 38,000 people would need to sign the petition to recall our current mayor. People will barely even get out to vote let alone organize and engage in an active recall.But there may be easier ways to collect ballots, for example using the internet so long as it is accompanied by rigorous security measures. The generation coming up does everything on their phones, so if we want them to eventually be part of the democratic process we will need a voting app with ‘rewards’. Otherwise, they will just look at TikTok to see who should win without actually being bothered to vote. If we don’t make voting as easy as ‘Skip the Dishes,' we will lose a whole generation of voters.So what is the best solution for solving our electoral woes? More democracy. We need to have municipal elections every two years.I can already hear the wailing from people who really don’t like democracy. They should be happy that we aren’t like Australia where it is illegal to not vote. People who don’t support democracy or actively undermine it should be the only ones who suffer for unwise electoral decisions. For example, only the 45% of voters who selected Mayor Gondek should have to pay the current proposed 8% tax increase on top of 5% increase last year. This sounds fair to me. But I digress.There is also the objection that two elections would cost a lot more. Well, the way to solve that is to do every other municipal election at the same time as the provincial election. This will complicate things a bit as there will be more ballots, but this isn’t insurmountable. Also, this will allow both the province and the cities to do more direct democracy via referendums. Why don’t we try this as soon as we can? I would suggest the next municipal election should be in May of 2025, or in a year and a half. Then the next one after that would be with the provincial election in May of 2027. The other upside is you don’t need recall legislation as voters will only need to wait a few months to change out a truly unpopular city official.So check out the website for yourself. And remember to tell the province in the comments to institute biannual municipal elections. Democracy can solve lots of issues.William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.
