KINGSTON — The city will move ahead with its plan to ask the voters in October if they want to adopt a ranked ballot system for future municipal elections.

Council voted 11-1 to add to the Oct. 22 ballot the referendum question: “Are you in favour of using ranked ballot voting to elect the mayor and district councillors in the city of Kingston? Yes. No.”

Council voted to keep the question as short and simple as possible, despite some councillors’ concerns that the voters, in general, may not know what ranked ballot voting means.

“Those three words don’t actually tell the voter what that is,” Sydenham District Coun. Peter Stroud said.

Stroud suggested that a description of the process could be added to the ballot question to help the voters know what they are being asked to vote on.

The referendum question, according to city clerk John Bolognone, needs to be clear and concise and must be answered with a simple yes or no.

Bolognone said a public education campaign would have to precede the election so the voter knows what ranked ballot is.

“This isn’t rocket science,” Bolognone said.

Mayor Bryan Paterson agreed that the question needed to stay short and to the point.

“The more information you add, the more difficult it is to keep it neutral,” Paterson said.

In a ranked ballot system, also known as a preferential voting system, instead of voting only for a single candidate, electors can rank the candidates in order of preference.

To win, a candidate must get 50 per cent plus one of the votes.

Votes are first counted for candidates based on the first choice marked on each ballot.

If a candidate has received 50 per cent plus one votes to reach the threshold, that candidate is declared the winner and the vote count stops.

If none of the candidates have enough votes to reach or cross the threshold, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The votes for that candidate are then distributed to the next choice marked on each ballot that was cast for the candidate.

The ballots are counted again, with remaining candidates receiving the votes they received in the first round and any that were distributed from the candidate who was eliminated after the first round.

If all of the candidates ranked on a ballot are eliminated, that ballot becomes exhausted and is no longer counted.

The process continues until a candidate reaches 50 per cent plus one.

In the 2014 municipal election, four districts — Countryside, Lakeside, Trillium and Pittsburgh — and the mayor’s race would have required multiple ballots to decide a winner.

City staff estimates that the cost of adding ranked ballots to the municipal election would be about $220,000 and would increase the cost of an election to close to $1 million.

elferguson@postmedia.com