Council votes no on election reform

Belleville city council on Monday night. Photo by, James Gaughan, QNet News

By James Gaughan   

BELLEVILLE – Belleville city council voted to keep the first-past-the-post voting system in place for the next municipal election on Monday night. 

According to council changing the election system to one that would have had people rank their candidates would have been a major change for both candidates and voters.

Coun. Paul Carr said that the decision to change the voting system shouldn’t be left up to council.

“A referendum is is the best way to gauge public opinion certainly when we’re talking about the fundamental right of voting. Everybody should have a say in what kind of format they want,” he said.  

He added that he didn’t think that at the present time enough people knew much about election reform and would be unable to make an informed choice about the issue. 

“I don’t think that there’s enough public knowledge out there yet to confidently vote on a referendum question,” Carr said.  

The first-past-the-post system give the person with the most votes the election win, whereas a ranked ballot allows the voter to express in what order they prefer the candidates.  

Coun. Mitch Panciuk asked council to delay the vote on this issue until the next council meeting so that they could collect feedback from the public but was unsuccessful.

“A lot of people are always talking to me the day after council meetings about what happened the night before so I know their watching it and it would have been a good chance to get some input,” Panciuk said. 

He did admit that it was unlikely a lot of people would have provided feedback though.