Bring on the Toronto democratic revolution

Municipally, our election system discourages voting and returns the same tired faces to office. A group of crusaders is aiming to find ways to fix that

The democratic process in Toronto is a rusty old beast that’s prone to sticking by habits and traditions and linear thinking. In the last two elections, only around 40 per cent of Torontonians voted. Thirty per cent of councillors have been on council for more than 20 years. Women make up less than a quarter of council. And in a city with a population that’s nearly 50 per cent visible minorities, there are only four currently serving as councillors. The numbers get more depressing when you look to the individual wards. In 2006, 14 candidates won where a majority of voters in their wards voted for someone else. Some won with less than a quarter of the total votes cast in their favour.

With no incumbent running for mayor this year, we’ve got a clean slate, an open field and a huge opportunity for a fresh vision for the city. But look at the mayoral race so far. We’re drowning in candidates who are white, middle-class men with centrist policies and minimal charisma. There’s only one woman on the entire long list, while the handful of candidates of Italian descent is what passes for racial diversity.

“Any way you look at it, the municipal election is a joke,” says socio-political Renaissance man Dave Meslin. “It’s a formality, and an expensive one.” This is why Meslin is heading up a new initiative from the Emerging Leaders Network called Better Ballots. The ELN itself is a non-partisan collection of civic leaders — an initiative of the Toronto City Summit Alliance (now headed by John Tory) — and Better Ballots includes Stuart Parker of the Toronto Democracy Initiative, iVote Toronto’s Desmond Cole and community activist Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, among others. Beginning from the ideas of democratic-reform groups like the Toronto Democracy Initiative, the Toronto Party and iVote Toronto and looking at other cities to see what electoral and governance systems work for them, Better Ballots will be hosting a number of public forums to explore alternatives and improvements to Toronto’s current electoral system.

To change the face of city council into something that better represents the immense diversity of Toronto, it’s going to take more than the right candidate or the right slogan or even some kind of shift in the political zeitgeist. Fixing democracy in Toronto is going to require a full-scale revolution. What’s encouraging is that there is no shortage of revolutionary ideas out there, and Better Ballots will soon be bringing them to a local forum near you.


CHANGE: IT HASN'T HAPPENED YET
Of course, changing a system about which many people are thoroughly apathetic is a tough nut. Few groups have managed any sustained discussion about how to improve Toronto’s democracy — though some have been trying. The Toronto Democracy Initiative has been pushing for a number of reforms since 2008. They include bringing party support out into the open, introducing a system of mayoral accountability and ending minority rule. Meanwhile, the Toronto Party (now known as the Toronto Party for a Better City) has been campaigning to allow political parties to run candidates in municipal elections, which would serve to counter the de facto party power of the mayor’s executive council and decrease the routine splitting of like-minded votes that occurs among challengers. 

Since amalgamation, the city has undergone a number of electoral changes, such as subdividing wards and extending the electoral term to four years. But there certainly hasn’t been much public discussion about anything further. “There’s a heightened level of murmuring after each election,” Meslin says. But that dies down as the campaign memories fade, and four years later there are the same old problems of low voter turnout, incumbent re-election and lack of diversity.

Consequently, the Better Ballots initiative is mostly concerned with trying to make people aware of what the problems are and building consensus on what the solutions could be. Stuart Parker suggests thinking about what type of government would best serve our communities at the outset, and deciding whether we need a presidential or a parliamentary system. Through public forums in the spring and ongoing online activity, the group will explore a number of concrete ideas, many of which are already being used elsewhere.

Incidentally, Toronto is the only one out of more than a dozen North American cities Meslin has studied that’s not using any of the seven possible election improvements put forward by Better Ballots. Meslin thinks of Toronto’s system as “Election 1.0,” so whatever comes out of this multi-year campaign (he’s hoping to present formal suggestions to Queen’s Park and city hall by 2011 and 2012, respectively) will be an improvement.  


CAVEAT VOTER
But first, a little bit of context: Toronto’s representational tragedy has some pretty serious implications for you and me, whether we care or not. As I’ve written before, city hall is the only government that we all engage with on an hourly basis — the scope of municipal infrastructure is so vast that you simply cannot go anywhere without encountering it. And city politics is the most accessible form of government. Municipal elections should offer an opportunity for direct action on things going on directly outside your window.

Sure, federal politics is exciting as a soap-operatic power struggle, but the war effort in Afghanistan is only a pressing daily concern if you are, or are related to, a soldier or an Afghani resident, and immigration policies are only up-close-and-personal if you are a newcomer or do a lot of travelling. Federal policy is important, but its effect is mostly big-
picture and trickle-down. The same goes for action at the provincial level. Sure, there’s healthcare. But education and social services, while formally  under the province’s jurisdiction, fall into the city’s lap when it comes to things like teaching kids and taking care of the homeless.

On the other hand — and forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know — the city takes care of your garbage, water, roads, electricity, sewage, police, fire department, transit, schools, beaches and parks, just for a start.

Try thinking about your local councillor every time you flush the toilet. Crude? Yes. But you see where I’m going with this. Doesn’t it seem that it should be worth some minimal time and effort to ensure that not just any jackass with 25 per cent of the vote is responsible for all that stuff?


EFIL4ZROLLICNUOC (COUNCILLORZ 4 LIFE)
One of the main imbalances that Better Ballots aims to eliminate is the Incumbent Advantage. There are so few instances of sitting councillors losing to challengers in an election that councillors are often thought to have a lifelong gig (kind of like a senator or Don Cherry).

Mayors in the GTA, more so than any other politician, are incredibly difficult to unseat. If you think Stephen Harper or George W. Bush’s re-electability are examples of the persistence of power, just have a look at the enduring tenures of “Hurricane” Hazel McCallion (31 years) or Mel Lastman (25 in North York and six in Megacity Toronto).

One of the Better Ballots suggestions, incidentally, is a term limit for anyone elected. The reason that it’s so easy for councillors to keep their seats is because the odds are in their favour. First of all, they are still working (and getting paid) as councillors while they campaign. They have name recognition, which is no small thing when 45 simultaneous campaigns are competing for media attention. They represent the default option, usually against a range of challengers. And, being familiar, they draw the organizing power of key City Hall players. Limiting their stay would be an easy way to get new faces and new ideas into the council chambers.

Even with unpopular councillors, incumbency is strong: you would think that having 70 per cent of voters oppose you would make it easy for the opposition. But when a whole bunch of people all try to oppose the candidate — as is usually the case in any of Toronto’s wards — the opposition vote gets split and becomes totally ineffective.

Something as simple as a ranked ballot would solve this problem, as no one could ever win with less than 50 per cent of the vote. Even the Academy Awards recently switched to a ranked ballot for the Best Picture category. Meslin explains that the Academy finally came to the conclusion that this is the best system for voting on multiple (more than two) candidates, since it prevents fragmentation and delivers a true consensus.

As Toronto Star columnist Royson James noted back in September, “Only one incumbent was defeated in 2006 — and it took a former councillor and police stationed at polling stations to effect that ‘change.’”


IVOTE, YOU VOTE, WE ALL VOTE
OK then, say we managed to attract a whole crop of outstanding candidates, with great ideas and multiracial appeal and no track record of municipal bungling. There’s nothing to stop the usual 40 per cent of voters from hitting the polls and putting the usual 44 faces back into their comfy council seats. Thus we come to the classic chicken-egg question: will an improved democratic system result in more voters, or will more voters improve Toronto’s democracy?

Contrary to what you may think, Meslin argues that getting more people out to vote is actually counterproductive to changing the system. In Toronto’s case especially, he says they’d just be participating in a corrupt system. The likely result would be further dissatisfaction and continued apathy. “The current system actually rewards apathy and punishes civic engagement,” says Meslin.

Even then, voter apathy is only a problem for those who are allowed to vote. Currently, there are thousands of Torontonians who pay taxes and use all of the city’s services who don’t have a say in how their money is spent and how services are run. I’m talking, of course, of permanent residents who have yet to become official Canadian citizens.

Mayor Miller raised the idea of giving all of Toronto’s permanent residents a vote in municipal elections — a cause which has since been taken up by former City Idol winner Desmond Cole (who is involved with Better Ballots) and the iVote Toronto campaign. This would not only encourage inclusiveness on council, but help welcome immigrants into the city that they’ve chosen to make their home.

Back in June, the mayor hosted an open meeting on voting rights for all permanent residents — an idea that’s had great success in many parts of the world. Since adopting this policy in the Netherlands in 1985, voter turnout in that country is now higher among non-citizens than among native residents. Compare that to Toronto’s 2003 stats, where the 20 neighbourhoods with the lowest voter turnout were the ones inhabited mainly by newcomers and low-income residents.   

The other important thing to note about that voter turnout statistic is that most of the people who don’t vote are also tenants. But unlike the non-status residents who aren’t allowed to vote, tenants — especially those in highrise buildings or low-income housing — simply aren’t encouraged to. “Tenants don’t vote, so politicians ignore them,” was how councillor Anthony Peruzza bluntly put it to anti-poverty group ACORN’s members last summer as they launched a “Tenants Vote” initiative.

Homeowners and business owners have a transparent financial interest in voting, because whomever is in charge of the city will be determining property taxes and garbage collection fees and water rates that homeowners are billed for directly. On a practical level, tenants have a tendency to feel isolated from these issues since much of their interaction with the city is through a middleman. Yet tenants pay property taxes and utilities, too — often at higher rates than homeowners — though the costs are usually hidden in their rent. Also, the approximately 50 per cent of Toronto residents who are tenants ride the subway and use any number of city services at higher rates than homeowners do. Arguably, it’s these folks who have more of a vested interest in how this city is run.


POST-ELECTION HANGOVER REMEDY
The revolutionary ideas the Better Ballots campaign will soon be introducing may ultimately be more exciting than the election itself. Yet in the meantime, Toronto’s Decision 2010 will still be another exercise in the same old broken Toronto democracy. Meslin hopes that the solutions Better Ballots comes up with through the public forums being held this spring will be ones that they can get candidates to endorse when election season ramps up this fall. That way, at the end of the 2010 election when people are still dissatisfied, we will at least have some ready-made options for fixing this democracy.


Further reading:
Seven models for improving democracy

Out with the incumbents: how to unseat the same ol' faces


» How would you fix Toronto’s voting system? Comment below or email letters@eyeweekly.com.

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