From article entitled "Proportional Representation" (by Robert B. Hayward) in The Nineteenth Century, Volume 15 (Jan.-June 1884):
[I have paraphrased or added content in square brackets.]
... Mr. Cowan, speaking at Newcastle, asked "What is it we want? Is it not government of the people by the people for the people? Parliament should mirror the spirit, wisdom and interest not of a section only, but of the entire nation. The elected should be an epitome of the electors. The majority must govern, but the minority should be heard. That is scarcely the case now, and every year it gets less so."
This then is real representation – that Parliament should be an epitome of the nation in all its variety. And does not this imply, when expressed in more formal, though less picturesque, language, that every group of electors who have common interests and common political sympathies and sentiments, should be represented in parliament in due proportion to its numerical strength in the country?
This is what is intended by the phrase "Proportional Representation." Strictly speaking, the word proportional is superfluous, for representation, so far as it is real and fair, must be proportional, and if it deviates very widely from proportionality it ceases to be in any true sense representation at all. But this word, having been extended, or rather appropriated to the existing system, which I shall take the liberty of distinguishing in this paper as majority representation, and the phrase minority representation having been misunderstood or misrepresented, by those who are the slaves of phrase and catchwords, as implying that the minority should rule and not merely that it should be heard, the phrase "proportional representation" may be accepted as expressing the ideal representation that has been above described.
... Reformers generally are agreed to this, that the time has come when the existing inequalities in the qualification for the franchise must be abolished, and a practically uniform qualification whether in county, borough or other electoral division, adopted. But beyond this it is difficult to find in the utterances of our practical politicians any distinct expression of "what it is we want."
...
The existing system of representation, called majority representation [AKA FPTP], regards each member of he House of Commons as representative of some aggregate of electors, the unity of that aggregate being determined by the rough and ready process of regarding the choice of the majority of the electors as the choice of the whole whether that majority be a majority of one or of thousands. Such a system is assuredly not national or popular. Thus districts are regarded as an electoral unit by ignoring the existence of some thousands of minority votes in each district.
...
No representation can be regarded as truly national that starts from the constituency as a whole and not from the individual elector as the unit of the representative system. The variety in the nation does not consist in the variety of constituencies, themselves homogenous, but must, if it is to be fairly and justly represented, take account of the variety within the constituencies themselves. Majority representation expressly ignores this, while it is of the very essence of pro-rep to count the individual elector as the unit.
In 1874, Britain suffered a wrong-winner election. Conservatives won the most seats although the Liberals won more votes.
Then in 1880 the Liberals won a majority in the House of Commons of 178 seats when proportionately they were only entitled a majority of 92.
... [in FPTP] majorities are counted and not weighed. A majority of 10,000 counts the same as a majority of only 10 or 20 votes in another district.
[Even if reforms are done to eliminate the existing small districts] there will be some districts where the predominance of one party is very large and the others where parties are pretty evenly balanced and the large majority of the former being counted as of no greater weight than the small majorities of the latter, large and uncertain deviations from pro-rep may be expected if the [FPTP] system remains unmodified.
Britain used limited voting in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and five other counties. Voters there could cast only up to two votes each, in three-member districts. (Also the City of London had four members but voters could cast only up to three votes.) Some fairness, some scant minority representation was achieved. If this had been the case in the rest of the counties, it seems clear that the Conservative would have captured a mere two-thirds of the English and Welsh county seats in the 1874 election, instead of the five-sixths that they did under FPTP.
A worst evil consequence of the existing system than the over-representation and unfair monopoly of power is the instability of the representation caused by the shifting of small majorities in nearly balanced districts.
If stanch supporters of one party are almost evenly balanced against steady supporters of another party, the political balance – that elects the members – is entirely at the mercy of a small body of electors whose political views are determined at best by some ephemeral cry, some clever catchword, some panic fear or some class interest or in too many cases by those baser considerations that it may be hoped the Corrupt Practices Act of the last session will have done something to restrain.
In 1880 37 seats were gained by the Liberals by a total majority of 1742, an average of 47 votes each.
[In summary,]
1. majority representation, merely counting majorities and not weighing them, does not secure that a majority of electors shall always command a majority of representatives.
2. the results of [FPTP] generally deviate widely from the ideal, which is proportional representation.
3. in large groups of generally similar districts, majority representation [FPTP] gives an excessive preponderance in the representation to the party that has the majority.
4. majority representation is unstable. Small shifting majorities have an undue influence on the representation, enormously exaggerating the fluctuations of political opinion in the country at large. [I speak to how this potentiality in the 2019 federal election could have easily meant a Conservative government, not a Liberal minority government, in my Feb. 14, 2020 blog "Small change = Big difference."]
[At the time of writing] some multiple-member districts, some pocket boroughs, etc. were to be modified by the institution of equally-sized districts, one vote per voter and one member per district.
But will it give fair representation? Is it fair for the individual elector?
In the first place the new plan involved majority representation with all the defects that we noted above,
for the simple reason that a single member is a unit that cannot be proportionally divided...
if the total electorate was homogenous, one party would take all the seats. The majority (elected to a majority of seats) would indeed rule but the minority would not be heard.
The division of a city or large district into wards or electoral districts would inevitably prove a fertile source of contention and chicanery whatever machinery were devised for effecting it, for the character of the representation might in many cases be altogether altered according as a line of division was drawn north and south or east and west, and the struggle would be renewed from time to time as due to a growing population the divisions would require periodic readjustments. lastly although the plan is said to give equal electoral rights to all electors, it could not in reality do so, because the value of an elector's vote would depend on the district in which he happened to reside, his vote counting as nothing if his political views were opposed to those of the party dominant among his neighbours.
The exact opposite of this plan is Mr. Hare's plan of one single district, or perhaps two or three corresponding to the great historic divisions of the UK. [This is impractical]... but if districts requiring two or three members are formed, it may possibly be found sufficiently simple in working and as effective as any other plan for securing the best and fairest representation of the district that can be attained.
Two extremes thus present themselves – one district returning all the members versus many single-member districts.
Where two-member districts are in use, either one party takes both seats or the two main parties take one seat each. The first means a large fraction of the electors are unrepresented; the second violates the sentiment that the majority [the plurality] should appear as such in the representation. [That is why an odd number of representatives works well in STV multi-member districts. The majority party in the district, if there is one, can easily have a majority of the representation in the district.]
Here is clear evidence of the steadying influence of an approximately proportional representation over mere majority representation. But the great value of this general result is that it shows distinctly that a better approximation to a really fair representation, than by mere majority voting, is practically attainable.
All single and double-membered districts should be merged in larger ones returning at least three members. Concerning many districts that include large centres of population, a much larger number should be assigned, the maximum number admissible limited only by considerations of convenience and simplicity in the voting. [Ten MLAs were elected in Winnipeg from 1920 to 1950, for example.]
Within the limits of each district the electors should be free to group themselves according to their political sympathies, instead of being carved out into sections determined by locality alone, for only in this way would be secured to each elector the full privilege of the franchise, which otherwise would be liable to be neutralized by his finding himself an enforced member of a group in which he was one of a hopeless minority.
The particular plan for voting, by which within each district the best approximation to pro-rep would be secured – whether Lord Cairn's limitation or the method of cumulative voting, or some method involving the principle of Mr. Hare's plan [STV], or some other plan that the ingenuity of practical politicians may devise – is beyond the scope of the present article to consider.
If reformers are once thoroughly agreed as to the end to be attained, though the invention of the machinery for attaining it will demand much careful thought and discussion, there can be little doubt but that a practically satisfactory solution of the problem will soon be discovered."
Thus ended Hayward's article. It raised valid criticisms of the First past the post system - the system that we use today for city, provincial and federal elections.
He used the term majority representation to mean FPTP. But we know now that FPTP may mean no such thing.
Under FPTP, many of our MLAs and city councillors were elected without the support of a majority of the votes in their districts.
Under FPTP, many governments take a majority of the seats without having received a majority of the total votes.
As Hayward pointed out, this is "because the value of an elector's vote would depend on the district in which he happened to reside." The system splits and divides the voters and wastes as much as 60 percent of the vote. A government elected to a slight majority of the seats with only 40 percent of the vote in effect has benefitted from the waste of 60 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile Hayward said a principle of democracy is that "The majority must govern, but the minority should be heard." Alberta's STV leader of the 1920s, John D. Hunt, used to say a similar thing:
"In a democratic government
the right of decision belongs to the majority,
but the right of representation belongs to all."
Under FPTP, any minority representation is of the accidental kind. A personable candidate is elected here by the vote splitting of his opponents. There, another candidate of the same party is elected due to a strong local presence. Each time perhaps squeaking in with but a few hundred votes ahead of the leading opponent.
The votes garnered by these two successful candidates are but a fraction of the votes received by their party – the mass of which are disregarded - these two being the only successful flag-bearers.
Supporters of that party look to these two MLAs to represent heir party interests in the legislature, even though they are elected to serve their two districts. Which comes first – party or place? It is an artificial construct. and arises because districts electing one MLA are pretended to have only one interest. As Hayward pointed out in 1884, districts are not homogeneous.
We see that today in every district. There are Conservative, Liberals, NDP-ers in each.
How can one person represent all of them?
They can't.
Party interests dominate so let's stop pretending and establish multi-member districts based on city, county or other geographical areas, where various MLAs can represent the variety of voting blocks in each place.
By the way, the example that I gave above of the two MLAs - the sole flag-bearers of a party that are elected - roughly echoe the election of Grant Notley and Ray Martin, the sole NDP MLAs elected in 1982.
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