Dealing with: an embarrassment of mayors

Municipal voting results too frequently reward people who do not represent the majority of electors. The consequence can be a mayor frequently at loggerheads with his council, sometimes fatally. Some examples:
     Item: In Montreal just under 40% of registered electors vote. Denis Coderre becomes mayor of Montreal with 32% of the votes. There are 11 candidates; the top 4 get nearly 97% of them.
(Coderre, in spite of his narrow win, may yet prove to be a superb mayor. If that turns out to be the case, lucky Montreal! But the new mayor’s "Equipe Coderre" controls only a minority of seats, and it would be at least useful if he had a more solid claim on legitimacy.)
     Item: In Toronto Rob Ford won 47.11%. Since his win two years ago he’s done everything required to trash his reputation, yet could win the next mayoralty assuming his ‘base’ holds and enough people run against him to split the opposition vote.
     Item: In Campbell River’s last municipal election 30% of potential electors cast a ballot. Walter Jakeway, who then had no record in municipal politics, won with 37.79% over two former councillors, who got 37.25% and 16.93% respectively. Jakeway’s term has been less-than-impressive, but he has his fans and could win again if enough people run against him.

In each of these — and, frankly, the majority of mayoral elections in Canada — when there are a number of strong candidates and the vote is consequently split, the results frequently frustrate the actual wishes of the electorate.
Of course this also happens in provincial and federal elections (i.e. Team Harper winning only 39.6% of the vote, but achieving a majority government, largely because of three strong parties). That one, however appears impossible to resolve at present. Municipal politics, less influenced by party politics, should be easier to fix.

And I think there is a fix. It’s called the “Preferential Ballot”, and it’s used in elections in many (usually English-speaking) countries. 
To see how it works in a Canadian context, we could look at recent nominating conventions of the NDP and the Liberals, which both used a hybrid version suitable for voting by mail and in convention. Or we could look at BC in1952, when a more cumbersome version elected the WAC Bennett Social Credit government that lasted some 30 years. (That government wouldn’t have lasted nearly that long if the Socreds hadn’t dumped the preferential ballot as soon as they could!)
Here’s how it works for NDP Leadership conventions: Those attending Convention vote in the usual way. The home-based elector fills in a ballot, indicating at least a first choice and a second and even a third if desired. If a candidate scores over 50% on the first count, it’s all over. If no one does, the lowest-polling candidate(s) fall out. The Convention delegates vote again and the mailed/internet ballots showing them as first choice are recounted for second choice. And so on, until one of the candidates achieves 50% plus 1.
In municipal elections we already vote on a scanned ballot so, in these days of the computer, the count would be almost as instantaneous as at present.
I think there’s a good chance many of our municipalities would run better. At the very least, mayors would be able to claim they legitimately represent the majority.
It might even dull some voter cynicism, and encourage some of the currently-uninterested to exercise their franchise.
Which is democracy as it should be.