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But then suddenly on Thursday, there was Councillor Justin Di Ciano complaining that as a new member of council, he had “more questions than answers.”

“Why did we request ranked balloting?” he asked. “What issues or problems are we attempting to address? What structural imbalances currently exist in our electoral system that are so problematic for our healthy civic democracy to flourish? … What new problems and challenges are we going to create in this process?”

Those are great questions, not all of which the councillor could have answered by doing some research. Indeed, there are many more questions. How much more would ranked ballots cost? Can our existing voting machines be modified to tabulate them, and is that a cost-effective solution? Would we be allowed to rank as many candidates as we wish, as in Minneapolis, or just our top three choices, as in San Francisco? How would we ensure people aren’t confused or disenfranchised? How much public consultation should there be in advance of the city’s decision? Would a referendum be appropriate?

It’s utterly pathetic, but there’s little point yelling at the turncoats

We’ll see what the province decides, but ideally those questions would be entirely up to the city to decide. Council is constantly asking for more autonomy. Yet on Thursday, 25 councillors — including seven who voted for ranked ballots in 2013 — essentially asked the province to save them from themselves. More than that, they had the flaming cheek to ask the province to save every other city from itself — i.e., to request “that the province … not proceed with amendments to the Municipal Elections Act to provide for ranked choice voting.”