What's up with Ontario and the Fords? (vargar.org)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by wraekscadu@vargar.org to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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Doug Ford keeps on getting reelected, his brother was the mayor of Toronto despite the drugs and overall unseriousness... I mean why do people elect these guys? Is it for the memes and laughs?

I'm being totally serious when I ask this btw. What does the average Doug voter's rationale for getting this guy in office? Same with former Rob Ford voters. Who voted for Rob Ford? Why?

Edit: TLDR of the answers seem to be:

Horrible effect of fptp, vote split between liberals, ndp and the greens
Low voter turnout

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[-] Nils@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://www.fairvote.ca/ontario/ for more info but in short:

Ford got 65% of seats with only 43% of votes, but only a small group voted in the last election. That means he was elected by ~20% of eligible voters. More than half of eligible voters did not vote last election.

We have here an electorate system that discards people's vote, discourage people to vote, or straight up disenfranchise them. For all the reasons you might be familiar with, gerrymandering, massive different in number of people in each district, propaganda from local and foreign agents. Also, I don't think the representative from my district lives here, I only hear about them during election time.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

More than half of eligible voters did not vote last election.

Which is the same as voting for Ford. They think everything is fine.

[-] wraekscadu@vargar.org 6 points 1 week ago

Ah now this makes a lot more sense. I didn't know fptp was THAT bad in Ontario.

[-] dermanus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Ford really took advantage of fptp last time too. He called a snap election claiming he needed a mandate to deal with Trump. Turnout was even worse than usual because it was February.

He timed it carefully, often Ontario will flip parties provincially (i.e. vote Tory when Liberals are in power and vise versa) so he wanted to lock in four years when it looked like Trudeau was on the way out.

[-] prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

so he wanted to lock in four years

Five years. Provincial governments (at least Ontario) have a five year term.

[-] thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Agree with everything that you said...add the size of our ridings at a 100,000 people to 1 representative. Ridings should be no larger than 30,000 people. Many people have never met, or could point out. their rep.