Robert Tyson on Proportional Representation and Single Non-transferable Vote system An interesting series of articles on electoral reform was published in 1912. They were written by Robert Tyson, a Canadian living in Toronto who was the secretary of the American Proportional Representation League.
Eight years earlier he had contributed to a book written by Alfred Cridge Proportion Representation including its relation to the Initiative and Referendum. Cridge (born 1824) had lived in Canada in the 1830s and after returning to the U.S. was abolitionist (anti-slavery) and with his wife (the author of what is said to be the first U.S. feminist utopian novel) pursued political reform in Washington D.C. and in New York. In New York, he was member of the Committee of One Hundred that overthrew the control by the Tammany mob. Simon Sterne, another member of the Committee of One Hundred, was also a member of the Minority Representation League and many proportional representation leagues, showing the overlap of pro-rep and other political reform campaigns.
Robert Tyson in his Grain Growers Guide articles endorsed the Single Non-transferable Vote system as a crude but entirely workable plan of pro-rep. Under that system there would be multiple-member districts, and voters would cast single votes (ones that would not be transferred). These together provide crude proportionality as compared to First past the post (the system used today in Edmonton, Alberta and federal elections) or Block Voting (the system used in most municipalities in Alberta).
Multiple-member electoral districts may be formed by adding together several of the existing single-member districts. If the eight electoral districts covering Toronto were made into one, Tyson wrote, any one-eighths or so of the voters would be absolutely sure of electing one representative regardless of what the other seven-eighths chose to do, and the remaining seven-eighths would have the same privileges.
As to the size of electoral district, Tyson suggested that no district should elect fewer than five members, and, he wrote, it may elect as many more as you like providing they do not get so large and clumsy a ballot or bewilder the voter with too many candidates. The Biblical number seven was in his view the ideal number of seats for each electoral district. This would usually mean from 12 to 16 candidates.
(Tyson underestimated the number of candidates that would run for each STV seat in Alberta elections. In the 1948 provincial election, held using STV with five seats in Edmonton, there were 16 candidates; in 1952, 29 candidates ran for seven seats. This is not solely product of STV - without STV in the 2019 election using FPTP, 11 candidates ran for the sole seat in Edmonton Strathcona , all but one of them for a registered party.
In fact under STV, the number of parties did not increase much (see January 15 2020 blog). STV aside, the number of parties have been growing since 1910s, as Canada's economy, society and politics has become more sophisticated. But the FPTP system, in use federally since the 1860s, has been unmodified during all that time. Hence you could say we are still using a pre-telephone electoral system in the computer age.)
The most important point of representation under STV, Tyson wrote, is that there are separate groups of voters, each supporting a different candidate, that the units or individuals comprising these groups come from all over the large electoral district. They are grouped according to opinion, not forced to group themselves by mere locality.
As crude as the Single Non-Transferable Vote is, it would abolish most of the evils of the single-member-district [FPTP] system, Tyson wrote.
Bribery would be of little use. Bribes would help achieve a candidate's own election but would nothing to prevent the election of four or more popular candidates elected at the same time each by a different group of voters.
The gerrymander would be of little use.
Partisan bitterness would die for want of nourishment, because each party would be represented in fair proportion to its voting power.
Under Single voting in multiple-member districts, the best candidate could easily be elected, because each would only need quota, not a large 25 to 50 percent of the vote in the district, and his campaign would not be a life and death struggle against threatening opponents. The present party monopoly of nomination would disappear. A candidate who knew that he had a quota of voters behind him could snap his fingers at an adverse party nomination.
The process would be just the same as if only the first choices are counted in the Hare system, and often in that system those who head the poll on the count of first choices are those ultimately elected even after vote transfers, producing roughly proportional results.
"It frequently happens that the candidates who head the count of first choices are those finally elected showing that transfers did not make any difference. Transfer provisions are mainly in the nature of a safeguard to meet contingencies. They also give the voter a feeling of confidence that his vote will not be wasted on a defeated candidate."
Although the Single Non-transferable Vote was perfectly effective as far it goes, Tyson wrote that the Hare system is a good workable and practical system giving absolutely fair results. And he pointed out it had already been used in Johannesburg (South Africa) in 1910 and 1911 city elections, where it had "aroused civic spirit and given real representation."
Twelve years later Alberta adopted Single Transferable Voting, which just as Tyson had predicted produced absolutely fair representation. For 30 years Edmonton and Calgary voters elected mixed representation that reflected the diversity of opinion held by the substantial parts of the voters.
References: Sterne information is from A History of the Great Political Revolution, November Sixth, 1894 (1895), p. 390 (available on-line).
The Cridge book is listed on ABE.
Robert Tyson's articles:
#1 "Why a Change is Needed", GGG, June 26, 1912
#2 "Proportional Principle" GGG, July 10, 1912
#3 "The Relation of Direct Legislation to Pro-rep" (different forms of PR) GGG, Aug. 7, 1912, p. 10
#4 STV GGG, Sept. 4, 1912;
#5 STV at the municipal level GGG, Sept. 18, 1912, p. 7
(The Committee of One Hundred that overthrew Tammany Hall grip on New York's city hall is not listed in the Wikipedia definitions of the term but is mentioned in many places in A History of the Great Political Revolution, November Sixth, 1894, published in 1895.)
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