This referendum is not about whether you personally feel any particular city would be better, worse or the same with run-off voting for councils.

If you support run-off voting in a particular locality, join or form a local group outside of Fair Vote Canada and promote it.

This referendum is about whether Fair Vote Canada, the national citizens organization for proportional representation, should fundamentally change its mandate right now to endorse a winner take all system for the election of any municipal body.

While I love Dave Meslin, his energy and effectiveness at campaigning on issues, I ONLY support the AV system for electing a single office – such as Mayor – or in the US President. For electing a single office it works well.

But in electing a city council I strongly reject this system. MMP or STV create a far, far more proportional result.

Having Fair Vote Canada accept this for municipal council elections would set a dangerous precedent. To have an AV system at the municipal level would be the thin edge of the wedge for the introduction of AV at the provincial and federal level – which would be a horrific blow to electoral reform.
I personally urge you to vote for Option A.

My concern is that the adoption of AV in the City of Toronto will add momentum to the Liberal strategists who are set on AV. It could shift the debate within the party in their favour as well as build public support in the media for AV in general and federally in particular.

For Fair Vote to support AV, when we need to be the voice for proportional representation would make the job for those of us toiling in the trenches of the Liberal Party much more difficult.

After all both FPTP and AV as systems are perfectly fine with some candidate getting elected to council or parliament with 50%+1 of the vote while the rest of the electorate is treated as completely irrelevant , unimportant, and not worthy of representation.

It's *those* unrepresented and wasted votes that Fair Vote Canada was built to champion and advocate for and supporting AV for election to any sort of legislative body would be a complete abdication of that responsibility and cause.

A change to AV would have no effect whatsoever on representation in the 24 [Toronto] wards where the FPTP winners each got more than half of the ward votes.

In those wards second and subsequent preferences would never be looked at and would count for nothing.
In the 20 wards with "minority members", AV would improve the representation. But overall, that would have only a very small effect on the representation of the voters on the Council….a gain of 5.25%

If you look historically how countries make changes to their systems, …..we have often heard the rhetoric of incremental change, but it has never occurred. …I don’t see a lot of historical support for that idea.

I have spent the past 25 supporting proportional systems, not majority voting.

In Alternative Vote (aka Instant Runoff), your vote only counts if you agree with 50% of your riding. That's actually higher than our current system. AV diminishes the representation of ethnic & linguistic minorities, women, the poor and environmental concerns.

Dans le système du vote alternative, votre vote compte seulement si vous êtes en accord avec 50% de votre circonscription. C'est un taux qui est en fait plus haut que notre système actuel. Le vote alternatif diminue la représentation des minorités ethniques & linguistiques, des femmes et des plus démunis de notre société.

One of us in our small action group who is new to the issue of electoral reform pointed out that fairness in elections is complex for newcomers to understand.

Sometimes it seems so, but I suggested that as long as you understand the results of various systems, you don't understand all the ins and outs of every system.

In any case, we know that multi-member electoral districts have been proven necessary to get any measurable improved results for women and minorities. Hey! That's all we need to know to choose option A.