In Canada, a “ranked ballot” almost always refers to the Alternative Vote (AV), a particular winner-controls-all voting system where voters rank the candidates in the order of their choice (1st, 2nd, 3rd).

This process institutionalizes strategic voting by funneling votes from a person’s first choice to their second and so forth until a single candidate is elected.

AV is used in Australia’s lower house where it consistently creates false majorities.

While people are free to cast their first preference vote for a smaller party, results in Australia show that AV shuts small parties out of parliament just as much as First Past the Post.

AV also tends to benefit larger, more established centrist parties.

For example, analysis shows that if a ranked ballot had been used in the 2015 election, the Liberals would have won an even larger majority (224 seats instead of 184 under FPTP).

The best use for ranked ballots is as a tool in proportional systems to help elect multiple representatives per riding.

Ranked ballots are also useful in municipalities that elect their councillors in at-large seats or wards with more than one councillor.

Democracy is supposed to be a “battle of ideas” in which people’s political representatives make them present in the decision-making process. Representation offers people an equal opportunity to make political change happen.

Other side-effects of FPTP include:

• Wasted votes

• Strategic voting

• Vote splitting

• Voter apathy

• Inequality of voting power

• Divisive politics / campaigning

• Decreased diversity of representatives