Ranking candidates in single-winner ridings is called the Alternative Vote, or Instant Runoff Voting. The Alternative Vote is not a proportional system.

As long as there’s only one winner in a riding, many (even most) voters in that riding simply do not elect the candidate that best represents them, and nationwide results are not proportional. Ranking candidates wouldn’t change this. As nice as it might be to rank them first on your ballot sheet, candidates of currently underrepresented parties would simply get eliminated in the second or third round of counting, in favour of larger parties. Studies show that 95-98% of the time, we would get the same winners as we do now. If you’d like more information, check out Fair Vote Canada's position paper on AV and independent sites like www.no2av.ca. If you like ranking candidates, please, go proportional by doing it in multi-member ridings. Try Single Transferable Vote (STV)."