Municipal Electoral System In Canada

Electoral systems are important because they affect all areas of municipal government by establishing the rules for electing representatives and the role of the executive. The system can also affect the representation of different groups, whether that be ideological, geographical, or demographics, as well as the outcome of the election.

There are five cross-cutting concepts that define the debate over the structure of municipal electoral systems which include, local democracy, representation, engagement, intelligibility, and accountability. Local democracy is important because the electoral system should allow for community representation as well as interest, and the system should provide easy access to elected officials because these officials

I find that this system would work best for Winnipeg because it is a large city, but it does not have a sizeable population like Toronto or Vancouver, and because it would be a system with high intelligibility because it is similar to provincial and federal elections. A ward system will allow the city to equally represent individuals throughout the municipality with elected officials because wards can represent communities or socio-demographics depending on where the borders are drawn. The importance of how borders are drawn was seen in London, Ontario when each ward had a piece of the suburbs as well as the downtown area so as to share the responsibility of maintaining downtown London. Instead, the suburbs were well represented, and the wants of downtown residents went completely unrecognized, which led London to redraw the boundaries to represent communities instead of ensuring diversity. Adversely, ward systems can also enable parochialism to occur because councillors can focus solely on their own constituency since that is who elects them. Plurality voting would be the best system because it is one of the easiest to understand for all citizens, especially new immigrants and the population with limited knowledge of a city’s official language. Due to first-past-the-post’s relatively uncomplicated system, it encourages voter participation, though it can also cause incumbents or the holder of office to repeatedly win and become difficult to remove from office because the electorate cannot identify the best. A no party system would also benefit a city similar to Winnipeg because there would not be any party solidarity and the council proceedings would not be dominated by a party’s competitive focus on degrading opposing parties. However, a no-party system discourages participation of residents