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“Wait! Don’t be fooled. She’s just a regular Malibu Stacy with a stupid, cheap hat. She still embodies all the awful [aspects] she did before.”

—“Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy,” The Simpsons, season five, episode fourteen

New Ontario Liberal leader Steven Del Duca is promising to bring ranked ballots to provincial politics if his party forms government next spring. But such a reform offers only minuscule improvement at best, threatens to send third parties into electoral oblivion, is premised on a disingenuous rationale (if not an outright lie), and is more about feathering the Liberals’ nest than improving democracy.

At the Ontario Liberals’ annual general meeting this past Sunday, Del Duca promised to change the type of ballot used in elections, as a “first step” to purportedly enhancing the province’s democracy. With ranked ballots, rather than marking an “X” for only their favourite candidate, voters would instead rank the candidates in order of preference. It’s not clear if this proposed change would involve a referendum or simply be ushered in by legislation, but thus far it sounds like the latter.

Del Duca also claimed he would resign if he doesn’t implement the aforementioned ranked ballots during Ontario’s 43rd Parliament, and that Liberals would subsequently form a citizens’ assembly to gauge further democratic changes.

A Liberal party, temporarily banished to the political hinterlands of third-party status, making flowery offers regarding electoral reform. Where might we have heard this before, dear reader?

To Del Duca’s credit, he is refreshingly honest about which electoral system Liberals prefer, rather than the usual Grit tactic of being coy about such crucial details. And, at least thus far, it sounds like he’s promising to implement electoral reform without delay, rather than stymie the process with a referendum intended to fail, as former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did 14 years ago. However, if we’re being cynical – or perhaps realistic – there’s still time for Del Duca to acquire cold feet after getting elected and suggest a referendum would be needed after all, just as both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault did in recent years when they realized their reform promises threatened their respective routes to re-election.

But if Del Duca is being surprisingly open about which electoral system he intends to switch Ontario to, he’s not being honest about why.

The Ontario Liberals claim elections that use ranked ballots would foster greater civility and less vitriol – that politics would be characterized by consensus rather than conflict – because candidates would require more than just first-preference votes. In other words, candidates would have to appeal to as many voters as possible, even to those who prefer another candidate/party, to acquire enough second-preference votes. It would no longer be possible to get elected with just 40 percent of the vote, and thus the tone of politics would naturally become more cooperative.

Except for one problem: this claim is largely nonsense.

Admittedly, it’s true that ranked ballots can encourage politicians to tone down the toxicity – but only in non-partisan contests devoid of political parties, such as municipal council elections featuring independent candidates. However, Ontario’s provincial elections are partisan – they involve political parties – and that wouldn’t change with the adoption of ranked ballots.

The suggestion that Ontario’s rival parties would suddenly join hands and engage in a harmonious rendition of Kumbaya just because of ranked ballots is completely without basis. Just look at the Australian House of Representatives, which uses the electoral system Del Duca is proposing for Ontario: ranked ballots and single-member ridings, formally known as “instant-runoff voting.” Politics “Down Under” is arguably more acerbic than here in Canada. In fact, the United Kingdom’s Report of the Independent Commission on the Voting System from 1998 specifically noted that Australian “politicians tend to be, if anything, more blunt and outspoken than [their British equivalents]”. Note that Australia adopted this voting system way back in 1918; if 103 years hasn’t been long enough for ranked ballots to bring civility to Australian politics, perhaps it’s time to admit such claims are complete codswallop.

One positive outcome that ranked ballots would actually achieve for Ontario’s elections – oddly unmentioned by Del Duca – is the elimination of strategic voting. Ontarians would be liberated to support their favourite candidate without fear of “splitting the vote,” and no candidate/party would be too minor to vote for.

However, because ranked ballots would be paired with single-member ridings under Del Duca’s proposal, there would be no improvement to the diversity of Ontario’s legislature. In fact, the two largest parties would likely come to dominate even more. Of the 151 seats in Australia’s House of Representatives, two parties won all but six seats in the most recent federal election. That is even less proportional and more skewed than the first-past-the-post system currently used in Canada’s provincial and federal elections.

Instant-runoff voting makes it difficult even for large third parties to get elected in Australia, where the Greens only have one federal Member of Parliament, despite earning 10.4 percent of the vote in 2019. (Under a proportional system, they would have received 16 seats.) Make no mistake: like Ontario’s current voting system, Del Duca’s proposed instant-runoff voting is a “winner-takes-all” system that favours the status quo – and might actually make it worse.

So sure, with ranked ballots you could vote Trillium instead of Tory, or Moderate instead of Liberal, or Communist instead of NDP, or Go Vegan instead of the Greens, without having to worry about “wasting” your vote. But the reality is none of these smaller parties would come close to winning a seat under instant-runoff voting. In fact, if Australia serves as an example, even a larger third party – normally the NDP in Ontario – might struggle to retain official party status at Queen’s Park under such an electoral system.

(Strangely enough, when the British Columbia Liberals and Conservatives conspired to introduce ranked ballots for that province’s 1952 election in an effort to snuff out the rapidly-growing CCF/NDP, it was instead the Grits and Tories who inadvertently became the third parties, pulverized almost out of existence. Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Del Duca.)

Would getting rid of strategic voting really be worth Ontario having a less diverse Legislative Assembly? Do Ontarians really want to cram their four political parties into a voting system even less tolerant of multiple options? How would this possibly lead to better democratic outcomes, as Del Duca claims?

If adding ranked ballots to Ontario’s elections wouldn’t improve civility as the Ontario Liberals attest, and would actually make the Legislative Assembly less reflective of social diversity than it is now, it’s worth asking why Del Duca is pushing for this reform.

There are likely two reasons, in addition to trying to squeeze the Ontario NDP and Greens as mentioned above. First, Del Duca’s reform proposal presents him as an exciting reformist courageously confronting a bully, rather than a dull-as-dishwater technocrat. It’s an opportunistic ploy: last year, Doug Ford undemocratically quashed ranked ballots from Ontario’s municipal elections, so Del Duca hopes to portray Ford as the autocratic villain while presenting himself as the saviour restoring democracy – and extending such reforms to the provincial level. After all, successful politics requires you to define your opponent before they define you.

But the most likely reason is that an electoral system that captures voter preferences – rather than only their favourite option – is bound to favour a large, centrist party. A lot of Conservative, NDP and Green voters would mark the Liberals as their second preference, allowing the Liberals to win more seats than under the current first-past-the-post system.

In other words: this proposal is really about Liberal self-interest. Plus ça change…

Earlier this year, the Ontario Liberals conducted a policy survey called #TakeTheMic, meant to shape the party’s priorities ahead of the 2022 provincial election. According to the responses, adopting a system of proportional representation was more popular than adopting ranked ballots (instant-runoff voting), and yet Del Duca has chosen to ignore this advice, as proportional voting would likely deliver fewer seats to the Liberals.

Del Duca’s ranked ballots proposal is not about reinvigorating Ontario’s democracy. It’s about retaining a winner-takes-all status quo, and possibly further inflating the Liberals at the expense of third parties. It’s about getting back in power at Queen’s Park – and staying there.

Interestingly, during his speech this past weekend, Del Duca proactively attempted to disarm those who would rather see Ontario embrace a proportional voting system.

“Now, there are people who will say that [instant-runoff voting] is not a perfect solution, but the status quo is simply not serving people’s interests, and something needs to change.”

Those people are Ontarians, Mr. Del Duca. The same people who responded to your party’s recent policy survey, who you are now choosing to ignore because their answers didn’t align with your premeditated motives.

Del Duca is right on one thing: something needs to change. But by merely adding ranked ballots to Ontario’s elections, it’s barely a change at all. In fact, if Australia is any example, instant-runoff voting might further erode the province’s democracy.

Adopting ranked ballots might be a half-decent improvement for Toronto’s non-partisan city elections, but not for Ontario’s provincial elections contested by political parties. Del Duca disingenuously insists otherwise, which should make voters question whether they can trust him.

If the Ontario Liberals genuinely want to improve the province’s democracy, they should listen to the Ontarians who responded to their party’s policy survey and opt to champion proportional representation. Otherwise, they’re wasting our time by peddling the electoral reform equivalent of snake oil.

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There have been many complaints about the necessity of the 2021 Canadian election. But it may finally prove more important in retrospect.

The latest federal contest at least raises an intriguing question. Are voters, or growing numbers of political activists at any rate, increasingly demanding a more collegial and co-operative incarnation of Canada’s parliamentary democracy?

There have been, for instance, eight federal elections so far in the 21st century. Three of them, in 2000, 2011, and 2015, have returned majority governments.

Five elections, however, have returned minority governments, where no party had at least 50% plus one of the seats in the elected parliament — in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2019, and now 2021.

All five recent minority governments have finally had to co-operate with their oppositions in some degree, to get key legislation and government budgets through the House of Commons.

All told there have been 15 minority governments in Canada since 1867. A new Progressive Party complicated the struggle between Liberals and Conservatives in the 1920s. The New Democratic and Social Credit parties had a parallel impact in the 1960s.

The latest minority governments of the 21st century are arguably tied to two historical events. One is the election of 1993. The other is the introduction of fixed date election legislation by the minority government of Stephen Harper’s new Conservative Party of Canada in 2007.

The 1993 election was the first in which the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois ran candidates. In this and other respects it “gutted the Canadian political structure like no other,” in the sharp words of journalist Lawrence Martin.

The 2007 fixed date legislation — requiring that each election take place on the third Monday in October, in the fourth calendar year after the preceding election — echoed similar early 21st century action in Canadian provinces and elsewhere.

The legislation adapted an ancient practice of Democracy in America to Canada’s somewhat different “Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom,” as prescribed in what we now call the Constitution Act, 1867.

Because of this the 2007 legislation includes the crucial sentence: “Nothing in this section affects the powers of the Governor General, including the power to dissolve Parliament at the Governor General’s discretion.”

This provision is integral to our kind of parliamentary democracy, where a government can last only as long as it retains the support of a majority in parliament. It also legitimizes so-called snap elections called by prime ministers who effectively appoint governor generals.

This has meant that since the 2007 fixed date legislation was passed Canada has had only two elections the prescribed four years apart (2015, 2019), and three snap elections at shorter intervals (2008, 2011, 2021).

One potentially intriguing feature of the 2021 federal campaign has been a novel claim that the minority government elected in 2019 should have carried on with the people’s business, until the next legislated fixed date election on the third Monday in October, 2023.

The September 20, 2021 election on this view was unnecessary and even “unlawful”! And the argument is logically accompanied by a parallel claim that our party politicians should increasingly behave with more collegiality and co-operation.

Some have urged as well that in the very similar results of the 2019 and 2021 elections the Canadian people have voted as if our current electoral system were “proportional representative” instead of “first past the post.” And this further implies some increasing popular demand for less partisan and competitive politics in Ottawa.

The fate of the 2021 minority government could begin to tell us just how much of a future this point of view might have. Even former Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts has suggested that the new government might just try to last the fixed date term of four years.

A government that succeeded in or at least came very close to doing this would almost certainly be a more collegial and co-operative government than in the past. (And it would require much greater co-operation from opposition parties too.)

At the same time, already other expert voices are arguing that the Trudeau Liberal minority government elected in 2021 is unlikely to last too long. And this brings a more traditional perspective to bear on the issue.

It is also possible that the real wave of the future is the 2011 and 2015 elections. Liberals and Conservatives at least may not be all that likely to give up on the longstanding quest for more partisan and competitive majority governments any time soon.

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The Liberals have no idea what they’re doing, or why they’re doing whatever it is they’ve found themselves doing. With less than a month to go until election day, will they manage to figure out a reason they called one?

You would have thought that at some point over the last several months of speculation that there was going to be an election at the end of summer, some of the people planning to spring that election might have figured out what they might do during the thing they were in the process of starting.

Look, I get they were massively ahead in the polls, and big polling leads tend to make incumbents — how should I put this — extremely stupid and arrogant.

But for not one moment so far has Justin Trudeau been able to articulate what the point of this is.

He’ll do something like promise to bring in 10 days of sick leave, which is a great idea it’s genuinely something the feds should lead on when the province won’t, but the question is: where the hell were you on this months ago? This would have sailed though parliament if it had been proposed earlier.

That’s probably the most galling one, because it’s not some policy with down the road effect, it’s a concrete thing that would have had benefits for people in the middle of a COVID wave. It also would have put pressure on the provinces to start mandating sick pay in their jurisdictions. But it didn’t happen then, it was just a shiny bauble to hold back for when the election came around.

Where the party has shown some glimmer of knowing what it was doing is in the day-to-day tactics of campaigning. They’ve done things to try and pin down Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole on mandatory vaccines, or some farcical-yet-ultimately-effective shenanigans to put the privatization of health care on the ballot.

But this is just tactics, a campaign is about more than winning the day’s news cycle. You have to be winning the news cycle with some purpose. There has to be some strategy you’re trying to achieve with what you’re doing.

It’s been more than a week now, and still this election drifts along in some ephemeral cloud. Why is it happening, what’s the point? Nobody seems to know, especially not the people who got us here.

It’s not that it’s expensive to run elections. What ever the cost is, I genuinely don’t care. I don’t think it’s a waste to hold a vote, elections genuinely do matter, even when they’re dumb as hell. And if it costs tens of millions of dollars to hold an election, so be it, pay the man and let’s go.

It really does help to have a compelling reason to call the election, though. Especially this time around. Trudeau had the misfortune of getting parliament dissolved on the very day the Taliban retook Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I think this matters very little in terms of the response — a government created by an invasion collapsed after a 20-year occupation packs it in, chaos is just about the only possible outcome — but it might be a little easier to swallow if there was some over arching reason for the plug to be pulled on parliament that particular day.

“We would like a majority government please,” does not count. But that seems to be all there is.

Wanting a majority might seem like a good enough reason when you’re on the inside, especially when your main opponent seems to be on their back foot. But why exactly should these people get a better position in parliament, just because they want one?

I argued previously there was an avenue for Trudeau to take that he could have said he was calling the election to really solidify what post-COVID Canada would look like. There was a way to talk about going to the vote as, essentially, a referendum on social supports post-pandemic.

But instead we’ve gotten a smattering of housing policy . It’s a mishmash that seems more likely to have come out of a political consultant’s report labeled “This stuff polls real good,” rather than a coherent vision for the future.

Despite when the Liberal braintrust may think of itself, they’ve never really been the smartest people in the room. Cunning, perhaps, but never de facto smart. Six years of their governance is all the proof we need of that. A smarter group might have followed through on some explicit promises made during previous campaigns. A smarter group might not have called an election until they were ready.

But these are not the smartest people. They don’t want to do things, they want to keep power. The reason they can’t articulate what this election is about is that to do so would to be too gauche. The reason they called an election when the did is because they were on an upswing, and O’Toole was on a slide. That’s it, that’s the reason. The seem to have figured they could wing the rest and the public would come along with them.

Unluckily for them, the public isn’t quite so easily led around. People actually do want something out of elections. That’s why in their quest to grab a majority, without knowing why they deserved it, the Liberals may just let government slip away.