The more I think about it, the more I think there's no point in strategic voting for the position of mayor of Toronto. The mayor only gets one vote on council, equal to the votes of every one of the 44 councillors. There are no political parties at the municipal level, unlike the federal and provincial levels where the party with the most seats wins. Locally, if the mayor wants to ban subways, he'll vote against subways and every reasonable councillor will vote for subways, whereas federally and provincially if they want to ban subways, they can whip the vote and make every member of the ruling party vote against subways. It seems to me the worst the mayor can do is embarrass us as a figurehead, which barely even enters into it. (If you were a tourist, or a band trying to decide where to take your tour, or a business looking to open a new branch office, would you be thinking about the pleasantness of the local mayor?) The more I think about it, the more my opinion moves in this direction.
However, there have been some city councillor candidates (primarily incumbents) who have endorsed strategic voting for mayor. Why are they doing this? Are they saying their votes are powerless? What do they know that I don't?
And why are they running for city councillor if they feel their votes are so useless?
Maybe I should be tracking these candidates down and asking them...
1 comment:
Great post, and very interesting blog, glad I came across it- have a lovely weekend :)
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