Rob Ford's Toronto

[spider]

If you don't support a candidate at all, don't rank that candidate. Ranking a second choice can't hurt the chances of your first choice, and ranking a third choice can't hurt the chances of either your first or second choice. All the ballots are counted toward their highest eligible ranking. If no candidate has a majority (50% + 1) of the counted votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and is no longer eligible to receive votes. The ballots are re-counted. This process continues until a candidate gets a majority.

The problem is when all but one of the candidates are totally unfit or just nuts why in the world would you vote for them at any level?
Just imagine if the goofiest of them all by some fluke attained a vote count over 50% AND WAS ELECTED. Great system.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The problem is when all but one of the candidates are totally unfit or just nuts why in the world would you vote for them at any level?
Just imagine if the goofiest of them all by some fluke attained a vote count over 50% AND WAS ELECTED. Great system.

At least with a Papal Conclave, they require a two-thirds vote of the electorate is required to elect the new pope. Unfortunately, it seems to take forever to happen, with all the re-votes. Seems to be the next best way to go with a ranking vote.

 

[adma]

And that's just another in a long line of disadvantages....they are so mondo-beyondo, that they make garden variety nutjobs like Minnan-Wong seem palatable.

Or, for that matter, Mel Lastman.

And I still wouldn't go so far as to call Minnan-Wong a "garden variety nutjob"; he's merely a firm right-of-centre type who, in this mondo-beyondo age, is made to look more nutjobby than he is. But transpose him back 30 years to the Mel's North York era and he'd be a plausible mainstream conservative suburban politico--the fact that he is the way that he is today has a lot to do with the coarsening effect of post-Harris conservativism, maybe with a touch of "yesterday's mainstream is today's nutjob" added. Sure, "mainstream" in the dubious Tammany sense of Lastman, Godfrey, and all, but...definitely of that lost era when Metro "worked", and all of this political-correctness stuff was just so much bla bla bla. Just as with Mel himself, he'd have been moderated by way of milieu: there was a certain municipal decorum that still held through the 80s.

Ironically enough, it may have been that birth-of-megacity moment that marked the real turning point agianst a certain kind of mainstream municipal conservativism, and perhaps as a paradoxical foundation for its cruder rebirth--anyone remember the late 90s when Doug Holyday was the first megacouncil's unyielding Dr. No?

 

[RC8]

The people deserve the government they vote for. Always.

Which is precisely why people in the Old City of Toronto DO NOT deserve mayor Ford. He got what, 15% of the votes here?

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Which is precisely why people in the Old City of Toronto DO NOT deserve mayor Ford. He got what, 15% of the votes here?

Less. But that is just those who voted. I can say easily that the majority did not vote.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

One of our problems is that not everyone votes. A large number of voters didn't even go to the polling stations.

The other problem is our first past the post voting, where just the candidate with the most votes wins. Even with less than 50% of vote. With ranked voting, the voter ranks the candidates you support (first is best). If you don't support a candidate at all, don't rank that candidate. Ranking a second choice can't hurt the chances of your first choice, and ranking a third choice can't hurt the chances of either your first or second choice. All the ballots are counted toward their highest eligible ranking. If no candidate has a majority (50% + 1) of the counted votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and is no longer eligible to receive votes. The ballots are re-counted. This process continues until a candidate gets a majority.

San Francisco has such a voting system. You can do away with strategic voting, but just not ranking or ignoring the candidates you do not want to win. You just vote for the candidates you prefer to win or are okay with.

Great Post.

 

[Admiral Beez]

B: A community doesn't just cease to exist because the clock struck midnight on legislation that says it doesn't.

Scarborough's been gone since the end of the last Century. If not now, at what point can we cease referring to an area by its former names?

Besides, the area that once was called Scarborough comprises vastly different demographics and economics for just one name to capture them all. For example, my parents live in the Meadowcliff area south of Kingston Rd. They have little in common with someone in an apartment block in Malvern. If RF wants to complain on behalf of presumably underserviced citizens in Toronto east end he should refer to the areas in question, not an entire former city.

Besides, the area once known as Scarborough's done okay on transit. They've got three subway stations, their own rapid transit system, etc.

 

[Palma]

I heard Doug Ford say today on The City the Rob loves frontline workers (I am wondering whether the workers you collect garbage felt the love). Doug finished saying this right after someone called in and stated he is in the union and works at the TTC and then went on about how subways last forever,,,blah, blah, blah.

And later Rob Ford is soliciting for the public to run as a councilor and states you can;t decide 3 months beforehand and then gives out his number. He then starts giving out requirements.....over 18 years old, a citizen, etc. I could not believe it, Then Rob Ford ask Doug what he would do regarding the scandal with the TCH. (this scandal the SUN has apparently uncovered with TCH and Pat McConnell (she bought a condo at market rate in a mixed use condo). She has the biggest condo. But if she paid market rate should not matter. But the fact that Rob Ford asked Doug what he would do if he were mayor. i could not believe my hears. And if Ford is so on top of things why were they not on top on the TCH after they got rid of Valentine.

 

[adma]

Which is precisely why people in the Old City of Toronto DO NOT deserve mayor Ford. He got what, 15% of the votes here?

To be fair, this logic only fuels the with-us-or-against-us dumbing-down of politics. You might as well be saying that New York City doesn't deserve a Republican governor, or upstate New York doesn't deserve a Democratic governor--and in so doing, you're effectively endorsing politics as a selfish wardheeling operation.

Remember: it isn't so much a matter of city vs suburbs, but of Ford vs Miller (or even vs Lastman). Which is why I emphasize that even Etobians don't deserve Ford, never mind Former City of Torontonians...

 

[car4041]

Scarborough's been gone since the end of the last Century. If not now, at what point can we cease referring to an area by its former names?

Apparently never, if Yorkville, Weston, Swansea, Forest Hill, and many other formerly separate towns are any indication. Do you think we should stop using these names too?

 

[James]

Apparently never, if Yorkville, Weston, Swansea, Forest Hill, and many other formerly separate towns are any indication. Do you think we should stop using these names too?

But Scarborough was a city name, not an area of town. Yorkville, Weston, Swansea, etc. would be akin to Agincourt, L'Amoreaux, Malvern, West Hill, etc.

 

[Tulse]

it isn't so much a matter of city vs suburbs

That's precisely how the last mayoral election vote broke down -- literally none of the wards in the old City of Toronto voted for Ford, and almost all of the wards in the amalgamated suburbs did. The separation was a stark and near-perfect correlation between city vs suburb.

See this very revealing map for the truth of this.

 

[car4041]

But Scarborough was a city name, not an area of town. Yorkville, Weston, Swansea, etc. would be akin to Agincourt, L'Amoreaux, Malvern, West Hill, etc.

Weston, Swansea, Forest Hill were separate municipalities, just as Scarborough was. The only difference is that Scarborough was bigger. (But this is all very off-topic...)

 

[Admiral Beez]

Weston, Swansea, Forest Hill were separate municipalities, just as Scarborough was. The only difference is that Scarborough was bigger. (But this is all very off-topic...)

Size is not the only difference, and you know it. Scarborough was a city, with it's own city hall, bureaucracy, civil service, fire department, etc., etc. For one example, Weston has NEVER been a city. It was a small town that was amalgamated with the City of York in 1967.

But anyway, the point is that if the Fords think the eastern suburb of Toronto is under served by public transit, and he wants to refer to that area by name, then do so. If Weston is under served by the TTC then say it is, but don't claim that the entire former city of York is hurting, unless it's true.

It's not all of the former city of Scarborough that is under served by the TTC. If, for example, you live at Warden and St. Clair (and there are a LOT of new homes there now), you've a subway station within walking distance, from where you can access Union Station, downtown offices, STC, Yorkdale, Eaton Centre, both airports (though Pearson's no fun for anyone on transit), and eight bus routes. These are not under served folks.

 

[adma]

That's precisely how the last mayoral election vote broke down -- literally none of the wards in the old City of Toronto voted for Ford, and almost all of the wards in the amalgamated suburbs did. The separation was a stark and near-perfect correlation between city vs suburb.

See this very revealing map for the truth of this.

And as per my US comparison point: big freaking deal. If that's the case, then every political jurisdiction with stark city/suburb or city/rural divisions should break up in the name of thoroughly balkanized, big-sort politics.

The point is not to "negatively accept" those divides. The point is to bridge them.

And for the left, it isn't even a matter of winning the "outer wards" per se, much less equalling downtown-ward tallies: it's about earning enough mandate and respect out there to enable getting over the top at large.

You have to remember: fifteen years ago, Megacity seemed to mean bye-bye, finito to any chance of a left-of-centre mayor, again. IOW we were apparently doomed to an endless pattern of Mels and John Torys and Rob Fords, with no relief in sight.

Yet in 2003...Mayor Miller. I mean, true: there was a Tory/Miller equivalent of said "very revealing map"--most of the wards in Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke opted for John Tory. But...Miller got the "enough mandate and respect" to put him over.

In other words...it's possible. And Ford Nation is but a loudmouthed-schnook smokescreen.

And the key element is out of the Ford Nation sloganeering songbook: Respect For Taxpayers, and those who represent said taxpayers. And real taxpayers, not the Ford-ish euphemism.

And that's what made Miller succeed: he respected them. Throughout the city. As an urban lefty, he didn't wage wars against suburban righty. And so did, in practice, Mel Lastman--as megamayor, he was a coalition-builder, even in his lame-duck later years.

It's about bridging and understanding, not blithe dismissal. I think that in decrying the present "hopeless" situation, too many of us are acting like "80s municipal Jack Layton"--maybe it'd be more useful to learn from 90s municipal Jack Layton, he who became head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities largely through beyond-partisan bridge-building. Which, of course, served as a foundation for the federal NDP leadership--and lest we forget, a lot of those wards and polls which supported Ford in 2010 supported, or gave hitherto-federally-unprecedented mandates to, the NDP six months later. (Sure, it was the dreaded Conservatives that actually won a number of those seats; but, still.)