The 2018 municipal elections in Ontario were held on October 22, 2018.[2]
Voters in the province of Ontario elected mayors, councillors, school board trustees and all other elected officials in all of the province's municipalities.
Electoral period
As per the Ontario Municipal Elections Act, 1996, nomination papers for candidates for municipal and school board elections could be filed from May 1, 2018, at which time the campaign period began.[3]
Nominations closed on July 27, 2018, at 2 PM local time. Certification of nomination papers was completed by 4 PM on July 30, 2018.[2]
Voting was on October 22 from 10 AM to 8 PM.[2]
Ranked ballots
In 2016, the provincial government passed Bill 181, the Municipal Elections Modernization Act, which permitted municipalities to adopt ranked ballots for municipal elections.[4]
London was the only municipality to use ranked ballots in the 2018 election itself, with the decision in that city being made by London City Council in 2017,[5] while Kingston and Cambridge held referendums concurrently with their 2018 elections on whether to adopt ranked ballots for the next municipal elections in 2022.[6] Both of the referendums passed, though neither reached the 50 per cent turnout required to make the results legally binding.[7][8]
In 2020, the provincial government passed Bill 218, the Supporting Ontario's Recovery Act, which, among other things, eliminated the option of ranked balloting for municipalities. The City of London will now have to switch back to first-past-the-post for its 2022 municipal elections.[9]
Online voting
The 2018 elections were also noted for a significant increase in the adoption of online voting. Across Ontario, over 150 municipalities conducted their elections primarily online, with physical polling stations either abandoned entirely or limited to only a few central polling stations for voters who could not or did not want to vote online.[10]
On election day, however, 51 of those municipalities, all of which had selected Dominion Voting Systems as their online voting contractor, were affected by a technical failure. According to Dominion the company's colocation centre provider imposed a bandwidth cap, without authorization from or consultation with Dominion, due to the massive increase in voting traffic in the early evening, thus making it impossible for many voters to get through to the server between 5:00 and 7:30 p.m.[11] All of the affected municipalities extended voting for at least a few hours to compensate for the outage; several, including Pembroke, Waterloo, Prince Edward County and Greater Sudbury, opted to extend voting for a full 24 hours into the evening of October 23.[12]
Referendum on ranked ballots. The "yes" side won decidedly with 62%, but the turnout to make the referendum binding did not reach the 50% mark. However, Kingston City Council has promised to pursue the matter anyway.[28]
The results for St. Thomas city council are as follows:
At-large 8 to be elected
Candidate
Vote
%
Steve Peters
8,197
13.58
Jeff Kohler (X)
5,888
9.76
Gary Clarke (X)
5,032
8.34
Lori Baldwin-Sands
5,019
8.32
Linda Stevenson (X)
4,080
6.76
Mark Tinlin (X)
3,939
6.53
Joan Rymal (X)
3,477
5.76
Jim Herbert
3,417
5.66
John Laverty
3,036
5.03
Rose Gibson
2,927
4.85
Lesley Buchanan
2,607
4.32
David Mathers
2,423
4.01
Serge Lavoie
2,296
3.80
Petrusia Hontar
1,995
3.31
Timothy Hedden
1,711
2.83
Greg Graham
1,496
2.48
Kevin Smith
1,190
1.97
James Murray
842
1.40
Michael Manary
785
1.30
Windsor
References
^"Municipal Election Statistics". Association of Municipalities Ontario. Retrieved July 3, 2022.
^ abc"2018 - 2019 Municipal Election Calendar" (PDF). City of Toronto government. May 3, 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 26, 2017. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
^"Municipal Election Resources - 2018 Regular Election". Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Archived from the original on July 12, 2017. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
^"Legislation passes allowing Ontario municipalities to use ranked ballots". The Globe and Mail, June 7, 2016.
^"London, Ont., votes to become 1st Canadian city to use ranked ballots". CBC News Windsor, May 2, 2017.
^Andrew Coyne, "Election reform is coming to Canada — somewhere, somehow, and soon". National Post, October 6, 2017.
^"Cambridge voters approve ranked balloting measure but low turnout could spike it". Global News, October 23, 2018.
^"Kingston says “Yes” to electoral reform". Kingstonist, October 23, 2018.
^"Ford government moves to scrap ranked ballot elections for Ontario municipalities". CTV News Toronto. October 20, 2020. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved October 21, 2021.
^"How e-voting is taking over Ontario municipal elections". TVOntario, October 8, 2018.
^"Bandwidth glitch delays Sudbury's municipal election". Sudbury Star, October 23, 2018.
^"Technical problems force many Ontario municipalities to extend voting". CTV News, October 23, 2018.
^"Unofficial Notice of Nominations - Municipal Elections - Chatham-Kent". Archived from the original on May 21, 2018. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
^"Error" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 26, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
^"2018 Norfolk County Municipal Election". Archived from the original on October 25, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2018.
^"General Information – Norfolk County". Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
^"Roger Geysens Resigns From Council". Norfolk Today. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
^"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 26, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Election Results". Archived from the original on October 25, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2018.
^"Archived copy". Archived from the original on September 28, 2018. Retrieved September 30, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 14, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 1, 2018. Retrieved July 31, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Elections Voter FAQs - the City of Quinte West". Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved July 20, 2018.
^"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 9, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Smiths Falls" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 8, 2018. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
^"City of St. Thomas 2018 Municipal Election Official Results" (PDF). City of St. Thomas. Retrieved October 26, 2018.