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London’s trailblazing move to adopt a new voting system untested by any city in Canada made no difference this time to who won its city council seats. But embedded in new numbers on the Oct. 22 election are promising takeaways about ranked-ballot voting. Our Megan Stacey reports:

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Forget the grumbling about change or the long wait for results – the numbers are in on the ranked-ballot experiment that propelled London into national headlines during the fall civic election, and most voters bought into the new system.

The switch to preferential voting, the first by a Canadian city in a civic election and delivered under a hurry-up deadline in time for the Oct. 22 vote, made no difference in the end to who won the mayoral race or any of the 14 ward council seats. But there’s good evidence voters warmed to the change, designed to produce winners with a majority of the vote and held out to be a more inclusive system that makes every vote count.

And there were intangible benefits, experts note — stuff the raw numbers don’t express.

Just shy of 70 per cent of those who voted for a new mayor ranked more than one candidate on their ballot in the departure from traditional just-pick-one voting, with the largest proportion of those voting for mayor – more than 46 per cent – using all three of their choices for mayor at the ballot box.

Thirty per cent eschewed preferential voting, picking only one mayoral candidate, and a small portion – about one per cent – spoiled their ballot by voting for too many people.

The better than two-to-one split between voters who ranked their choices, compared to those who didn’t, suggests a positive first venture into a preferential voting system at the municipal level, said Aaron Moore, a political scientist at the University of Winnipeg who’s studied electoral reform and ranked-choice voting.

“I think that means the majority of voters embraced the system. They understood it,” he said. “Even if your preferred candidate didn’t win, at least you had an opportunity to make a selection for others.”

So what does that mean for London’s guinea-pig status as the first Canadian city to adopt ranked ballots?