In 2016 the Ontario Government passed legislation which allows municipal governments to use
Ranked Ballots.
(link to government's informational website)

What are Ranked Ballots and how do they work?

  • Ranked Ballots are ballots that allow the voter to rank candidates in order of preference rather than only choosing one candidate
  • Once the ballots are cast, the ranking of candidates allows election officials to mathematically simulate a multi-round election
  • In a multi-round election if no candidate has a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least support is eliminated and another round of voting takes place
  • This is repeated until a candidate successfully earns a majority of the vote
This short video illustrates a Ranked Ballot election

What if there is more than one winner?

In Guelph we have two councillors per ward so electoral races have more than one winner. This situation (multi-member elections) is very common in Ontario and the Ranked Ballot legislation takes this into consideration. From the voter's perspective, nothing changes. Your ballot looks exactly the same as a single-member election (eg. mayor) and you still rank the candidates in order of preference.
How the ballots are counted is a bit different. The winning candidates do not need to get 50%+1 votes to win, but rather they need to reach the "majority threshold". The threshold depends on the number of winners according to the mathematical formula shown below:
Counting ballots in a multi-member election
This short video illustrates a Ranked Ballot election with multiple winners
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