In just under 2 weeks time - 4 November - voters in Don Valley West (Ward 15) will vote to elect a new city councillor to fill the vacancy left by the unfortunate passing of former councillor Jaye Robinson. As we have done in prior by-elections, RaBIT is asking all candidates in this by-election to take our candidate pledge and commit to “support and work to restore Toronto's ability to use ranked ballots.” We’ve also asked them to commit, once it is again possible, “to vote in favour of Toronto using ranked ballots for its elections.” 

We are pleased to announced that five candidates have already taken RaBIT’s candidate pledge:

• Evan Sambasivam
• Sheena Sharpe
• Shakhlo Sharipova
• Jason Stevens
• Lesley Stoyan

Thank you to these candidates for standing up for a better way to vote!

While those who follow RaBIT on Twitter (err… X?) will already know that we are very active in promoting candidates who take our pledge during these campaigns. In this by-election, we are also expanding our efforts to include more posts on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn as well. If you use any of these platforms, one way you can help us make a bigger impact on this by-election is by following us and by liking and sharing our posts.

If you are a candidate in this by-election and would like to take the pledge before it is too late, please get in touch at [email protected]. If you are a voter in Don Valley West and do not see the name of the candidate that you support on this list, please ask them why they haven’t taken RaBIT’s candidate pledge and encourage them to do so.

We’ll be back in touch with a final update on which candidates have taken the pledge just before voting day, so watch this space!

First-past-the-post undermines voter choice, yet again

While we are pleased that ranked ballots are already garnering so much support in this by-election, we were also very disappointed to hear that two candidates, Evan Sambasivam and Dhruv Jain, felt the need to withdraw their candidacies out of concerns that they would split the vote with candidates who held similar views. Once again, our broken first-past-the-post system is creating pressure that is driving valuable voices out of our elections. 

Anti-democratic, and totally unnecessary, outcomes like this only underline how important it is that the provincial government rescind its ban on ranked ballots. Not only are we losing critical diversity and perspectives from our elections in instances like these, think of the message that this sends to individuals thinking of running in other elections. And then think of all the people whose names and ideas we will never hear because of how examples like this discourage them from even running in the first place.

Welcome to our new Board Members! 

Shifting to happier news, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve welcomed new members to RaBIT’s Board: please join us welcoming Adrian Aliu and Mark Tomblin, and saying welcome back to returning Board member, Jesse Barke. You can meet the whole RaBIT board on our website as well as learn more about the application and selection process for board members. If you think you might like to join us someday, we accept applications for volunteer Board Members throughout the year. If you’d like to learn more, send us an email at [email protected].