1926
An expert on proportional representation was in Edmonton at the time of the 1926 provincial election.
George Hallett, Jr. gave a glowing review of the election in this Edmonton Journal article.
"Election Results Justify P.R. Claims
Under Old System Both Calgary and Edmonton Would
Likely Have Elected Full Conservative Slate.
Voting under P.R. 70 Percent of Those Who Cast Valid Ballots
Helped to Elect Members - Observations on Working Out of System
By George Hallett, Jr.
(Executive Secretary of the Proportional Representation League)
Examination of the returns from Edmonton and Calgary shows that the provincial elections have justified all the claims of careful advocates of proportional representation. In both cities, 79 percent of those who cast valid votes actually helped to elect members, and it is probable that most of the remainder saw some of those they had voted for elected by others. This is in striking contrast to the 37 percent of the total valid vote that elected all five members in Edmonton under the old plan in 1921 and the 40 percent that elected all five that year in Calgary.
A mere glance at the names of those elected shows that all important points of view have received representation.
Edmonton is represented by 2 Conservatives, one Liberal, one Labour and one UFA. This result was indicated by the very first choices, which divided Conservatives 28 percent, Liberal 23 percent, Labour 20 percent, UFA 17 percent and Independents 13 percent. Only an exceptional amount of cross-party voting or an exceptional amount of support for the Liberal or Labour by those who expressed first choices for the defeated Independent candidates could have upset the party result that was obtained in the end.
False Results Under Old Plan
Under the old plan, Conservatives would have likely elected a full slate, leaving seven out of ten without a spokesman, just as Edmonton was represented in the last session by five Liberals. This would have been unsatisfactory even to fair-minded Conservatives who would have been put in the unenviable position of being sole spokesmen for a city in which a majority of the voters had voted against them.
In Calgary the old plan would probably have given a similar false result, for the
first choices in that city stood:
Conservative 45 percent
Liberals 28 percent
Labour 27 percent
Independent 0.3 percent
Under PR, this distribution of the votes resulted in the election of two Conservatives, one Liberal and one Labour.
The Liberals and Labour were running neck and neck to fill the fifth seat, and the preferences on the Conservative ballots that were surplus to the two Conservative quotas gave the seat to Labour.
This, by the way, was a good instance of the desirability of marking choices under P.R. beyond the nominees of your own party.
When the last Conservative candidate in Calgary was defeated, most of his ballots were found to have no further choices marked. This did not help the Conservatives - it merely gave the important decision for the fifth seat to the smaller number of Conservatives who had exercised their new rights more fully.
Gave Effective Choice
PR not only gave each party its fair share of the seats. It also gave the voters of each party an effective choice as to whom the particular candidates to fill those seats should be.
Take for example the case of the Conservative party in Edmonton. Under the old plan the Conservative voters would simply have voted without discrimination for all the candidates offered them by the party organization. To do otherwise would have split the party vote and perhaps handed over one or more of the seats to some other party. But under PR the Conservative voters preformed an act more appealing to the man or woman of intelligence and more expressive of his real will. He not only voted for five Conservatives but expressed a free choice among them. If there had been a sufficient Conservative vote, all five would have been elected.
But the scattering of the Conservative vote was not dangerous in any case.
As soon as it became evident that Conservative candidate Robertson could not be elected, the ballots of his supporters were consulted as to their next choice, thus dividing the Conservative voters according to their preferences among the four Conservative candidates who remained.
Later when it became evident that H.H. Crawford could not be elected either, his supporters were likewise consulted, thus distributing the Conservative votes among the three remaining.
Finally when Dr. Follinsbee stood lowest on the poll, his Conservative support was transferred to the remaining two, who were both elected. Thus, Colonel Weaver and D.M. Duggan were discovered as the choice of the Conservative voters.
If any of the Conservative voters had not been satisfied with the five candidates of the organization, they could have added to the list and offered the Conservatives a still wider choice with equal safety. This was actually done in Calgary by the Laborites who nominated and elected Mr. Parkyn independently of the regular Labour slate.
Cross-Party Voting
Thus far I have spoken chiefly of parties, because most of the voters chose to vote along party lines. But of course the voter who chooses to disregard party lines and make his choices on some other basis is given just as effective a ballot under PR as anyone else.
The amount of cross-party voting was sufficient to have an important bearing on the result. For example, Mr. Duggan could not have been elected without the 131 votes he received by transfer from Liberal and Labour candidates while other Liberal and Labour candidates were still in the running, to offset the 327 votes that were lost on transfers by Conservative candidates to Liberal and Labour.
One important result of PR was the election of Mr. Lymburn to represent a minority in the city that could hardly have hoped for representation under the old plan. The representation of this minority has given the city direct representation in the provincial cabinet.
Mr. Lymburn's election incidentally illustrates the way in which a PR count throws new light on a political situation. Under the old plan it would simply be known that a certain number of voters had voted for Mr. Lymburn. Under PR it is known in addition that Mr. Lymburn drew his support from all elements. For when his surplus vote was transferred, the examination of his 3046 ballots showed 895 with next choices for Liberals. 752 with next references for Labour, 429 with next choices for a Conservative candidate, and 357 with next choices for an Independent.
Valid Vote was High
Apparently most of the voters found little difficulty with the new ballot. Both in Edmonton and Calgary the number of valid ballots cast was greater than under the old plan in 1921 - in Edmonton 18,154 as against 17,951; in Calgary 19,737 as against 17,187.
And in Edmonton (I do not yet have the figures for Calgary) the rejected ballots numbered only 584 or 3.1 percent of the total number voted.
While further educational work is needed, this looks like a very good start.
What I have said about the all-around fairness of the result does not apply, of course, to the country districts. For where only one member is elected there can be no pro-rep of different elements even when as in this election that one member is chosen by the fairest method available. As the official reports are not yet done, it is impossible to give definite figures for the country districts. But enough is known unofficially to make it clear that the UFA majority has been greatly over-represented.
This situation cannot be remedied by creating single-member districts in the cities. That would merely substitute in the cities a haphazard and unjust representation for the present fair representation of all, and it would make small difference in the total result.
If the system of election is to be made uniform throughout the province as presumably it should be now that that the experimental stage is past, the way to do it is to extend to the country districts the system that has just worked so well in the cities. This can be done by combining most of the present country districts into groups of three or more. The effect of such a change would be to grant fair treatment to the large minorities throughout the province, to assure each of the great parties a province-wide existence and to give the government the benefit of a discernible opposition."
(From Edmonton Journal, July 10, 1926, p. 5)
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NOTES:
Hallett stated the final result was foretold even in the First Count.
"Edmonton is represented by 2 Conservatives, one Liberal, one Labour and one UFA. This result was indicated by the very first choices, which divided Conservatives 28 percent, Liberal 23 percent, Labour 20 percent, UFA 17 percent and Independents 13 percent. Only an exceptional amount of cross-party voting or an exceptional amount of support for the Liberal or Labour by those who expressed first choices for the defeated Independent candidates could have upset the party result that was obtained in the end."
Also, the final result was also mostly foretold by the identity of the front-runners in the First Count. The three most popular in the first count - UFA Lymburn, Conservative Weaver and Liberal Prevey - were elected in the end. The two other front-runners, an Independent-Liberal and a second Liberal, were overtaken by a second Conservative and a Labour candidate in the end.
As Hallett pointed out, Lymburn's election was a landmark achievement of STV. Although popular in the First Count, he was representative of farmers, not a large block in Edmonton. It is thought that he would not have picked up many votes through transfers. But instead under STV they were not needed to take a seat - his First Count popularity was enough to get quota in the First Count and secure a seat. This would have been an unlikely outcome under FPTP and Block Voting.
On cross-party transfers, Hallett stated "Mr. Duggan could not have been elected without the 131 votes he received by transfer from Liberal and Labour candidates while other Liberal and Labour candidates were still in the running, to offset the 327 votes that were lost on transfers by Conservative candidates to Liberal and Labour."
Actually Duggan did not need a certain number to be elected. He only needed to be in one of the leading positions when the number of candidates was thinned down to the number of remaining open seats.
He won by being among the two most popular survivors when the field of candidates thinned to only three and the number of open seats had been reduced to two. He beat out J.C. Bowen by 53 votes.
Duggan could have lost his lead over Bowen at the end if the transfer of Gibbs' surplus just at the end, when no other Labour candidates were in the running, had gone a different way.
As it was, he maintained his existing lead over Bowen by receiving 62 votes from Gibbs, while Duggan received 38.
Duggan had started with fewer votes than Bowen but had passed his vote tally much earlier when Folinsbee was eliminated. The next choice on 346 of Follinsbee's votes were marked for Duggan while only 38 were marked for Bowen.
This ironically sealed Duggan's victory (although it happened much later). It was ironic because Follinsbee himself had started with a larger vote tally than Duggan but had been overtaken when Duggan had received many more transfers from Crawford than Follinsbee did. Crawford and Duggan were both southside residents so perhaps that caused more of Crawford's supporters to mark Duggan, and not Follinsbee, as their next choice.
Hallett's calculation of the seepage of Conservative votes is basically correct. This shows how even before computers, people could do somewhat complex calculations. By my calculation, a total of 331 votes were lost on transfers by Conservative candidates to Liberal and Labour. (In almost every transfer every other candidate receives at least one, usually several votes, with the candidates most directly connected with the eliminated candidates receiving at least half of the votes.)
And Duggan did acquire 131 votes from the elimination of Liberal and Labour candidates while other Liberal and Labour candidates were still in the running. (A Liberal and a Labour candidate were in the running right until the end.)
Duggan received 11 from Findlay, 9 from Roper, 1 from Lakeman and 74 from Farmilo. Gibbs's surplus was transferred when there were no other Labour candidates still in the running (so outside of Hallett's calculation). Duggan and the two other candidates each received some of his votes.
When multiple Liberals in the running, Duggan received 5 from Rea and 31 from Henry. These were part of the 131 that Hallett pointed out as seepage in favour of Duggan. Prevey was elected at the end when Bowen was eliminated. Neither events caused transfers, because they happened right at the end and themselves caused all the seats to be filled and the vote count to be ended.
But Duggan's victory was indicated early on when Crawford's supporters switched to him when Crawford was declared un-electable.
But Duggan's position as leading Liberal candidate was not for sure. If Bowen had been more heavily favoured in later transfers, such as when Labour's Farmilo and Independent candidate S.A.G. Barnes were eliminated, Duggan could have lost his lead over Bowen but that did not happen.
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The Edmonton Journal, in those days a newspaper by and for Conservatives, ruminated on Hallett's claim that a full Conservative slate would likely have been elected if the election had been held using FPTP. Its writers compared the fact that the Conservative candidates received more votes than any other party but only two seats out of five. Under FPTP with careful gerrymandering the Conservatives might have won all five seats.
Perhaps it was this grievance that pushed the newspaper to work to overturn STV, if not at the provincial level then at the city level. The 1926 city election held a few months after the provincial election used STV. Its results were challenged, with businessman W.W. McBain appealing the election of Labour's Herlihy to the school board. The Journal backed McBain's claim and backed the campaign for STV's discontinuance that followed.
Businessmen held a majority on city council and pushed through the authorization of a referendum on STV in conjunction with the 1927 city election. Voters in the wealthier sections of the city flocked to vote, and overall a majority of votes cast were in favour of discontinuing STV.
The 1927 election was the last city election held using STV.
1928 election -- first city election in five years using Block Voting
The 1928 election was held using Block Voting, each voter able to cast up to six votes.
Ironically, Labour candidates received more votes than the Conservatives in the next election. And that was even with old farmer/labour warhorse Rice Sheppard, running as an Independent, taking enough votes to be elected. So Labour used its strength under the new Block Voting system to take more seats than the Conservative business candidates. Labour then got the benefit of the bonus awarded the most-popular party under Block Voting.
Labour's Lionel Gibbs received the most votes of anyone in the city while experienced former Labour aldermen Alfred Farmilo and James Findlay also took seats. With the election of these three Labour candidates and of labour-sympathetic Rice Sheppard, labour took most of the seats up for grabs in this election.
With the continuing service of Labour aldermen James East and L.S.C. Dineen, Labour had a majority on council in 1929, a thing that might not have happened if STV had still been used.
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The 1926 provincial election was a "Who's Who" of Edmonton Politics
H.H. Crawford, an old Strathcona businessman, had served as MLA from 1913 to 1921 period. He had lost his seat in the 1921 total Liberal sweep of city seats under Block Voting. And he also failed his attempted comeback in 1926, Conservative running-mate former-mayor D.M Duggan being more popular. Crawford's business building next to the Strathcona Hotel is a Strathcona landmark today. (His sister, Mary Crawford, was a leading member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party, a predecessor to the NDP. Family get-togethers might have been challenging!)
John Whitnah Leedy, an Independent candidate at the bottom of the polls in this election, had had a colourful career. A farmer in Kansas, he had been elected in 1892 to the Kansas Senate. He sponsored a bill to adopt the so-called "Australian Ballot" which became law. The use of ballots printed and provided by election officials allowed secret voting. He then served as People's (Populist) Party governor of Kansas 1896-1900. He had then gone to the Yukon/Alaska gold rush where he served as mayor of Valdez. He then had homesteaded at Whitecourt and became a Canadian citizen. He had run as a Non-Partisan League candidate in 1917. A campaigner against private banks, he had authored two booklets on bank reform. At the 1921 UFA convention, he and fellow bank reformer, Edmonton farmer George Bevington, had sponsored a resolution calling for nationalization of the banking and credit system. Party leadership opposed the radical measure and it did not pass. He later died in Edmonton in 1935 at the age of 86. He was 75 years old when he ran in the 1926 election.
William Rea was a long-time chairman of the public school board and had been a strident warrior against the Alberta Teachers' Association when it was founded in 1919/1920. He had served as an alderman in 1924.
W.W. Prevey was well known, being founder and head honcho in the Edmonton City Dairy, an industrial giant in old Edmonton. He was a southsider, which might have aided his election as Liberal candidate in this election.
Prevey's election instead of sitting Liberal MLA Bowen was a sensation, but one that apparently reflected the sentiment of the voters. Certainly under a more party-controlled process, Bowen would have been elected.
Former cowboy John C. Bowen was a sitting Liberal MLA prior to the 1926 election call. Although denied a seat at the last moment in the 1926 election, he still had a high profile and was later named Alberta's lieutenant-governor.
Lionel Gibbs, elected in 1926, was already a sitting Edmonton alderman. He held both jobs until his death in 1934. Despite the heavy burden of his two jobs, it was not over-work that killed him. While vacationing in Ontario, he died in a swimming accident, a common cause of death for Prairie boys.
S.A.G. Barnes, unsuccessful in 1926 as an Independent candidate, ran in the 1930 election as a Labour candidate, again unsuccessfully. But the next election he was hand-picked by William Aberhart to run as a Social Credit candidate and was elected. However, his independent streak caused him to be kicked out of the party after a couple years. He then sat in the Legislature as an "Independent Social Credit-er."
Joe Clarke, so-called "Fighting Joe Clarke," was not elected in this election but twice served as Edmonton mayor. The Clarke Stadium was named after him.
D.M. Duggan, elected at the end of the vote-count in this election, had served as mayor 1921-1923. He had not run for re-election in the 1923 election, which was the first election in which the mayor's post was filled through Alternative Voting. AV mayoral elections were the counterpart to the use of STV for the aldermanic elections. Duggan's withdrawal from the arena was probably just coincidental. By 1923, Duggan had served the normal three-year reign for Edmonton mayors.
Elmer Roper would also later serve as mayor, from 1959 to 1963. Starting in 1922, he was secretary-treasurer of the Alberta Federation of Labour. When he ran in the 1926 provincial election, he was a public school board trustee. Despite not winning in 1926, he eventually had long service in the Legislature after running in two by-elections. Colonel Weaver's death caused the first of these by-elections.
Colonel Weaver was a prominent local military man. After rising to be colonel in the bloody trenches of WWI, he served as alderman 1922-1923. He did not run for re-election when Edmonton adopted STV in 1923. He was elected to the Legislature in 1926 as one of the two successful Conservative candidates in Edmonton in this election. He was re-elected in 1930. He died later that same year. More than 10,000 attended his funeral.
The by-election occasioned by Weaver's death used Alternative Voting, with votes collected across the whole city. It saw no candidate receive majority on the First Count. Conservative F.C. Jamieson, a southsider, a military man as had been Weaver, was the leader in votes. Labour's Elmer Roper was in second place. J.C. Bowen, who had been an unlucky Liberal candidate in 1926, was in third place in the First Count. No one got the required majority of votes on the First Count to win. After the elimination of Communist candidate Jan Lakeman and Bowen, the ultimate winner was Conservative Jamieson.
Roper would have better luck in a later by-election. Meantime, he was active in the founding of a new national party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party, a predecessor to the NDP.
D.M. Duggan, first elected in the 1926 election, was re-elected in 1930, 1935 and 1940, the last as an anti-Social Credit warrior. His death in 1942 from cancer occasioned a by-election. Votes were solicited across the whole city. No candidate received a majority on the First Count. CCF candidate Roper was in first place in the first count, ahead of a Government party (Social Credit) candidate and anti-SC warrior Lymburn (who despite minority support had been able to be elected in 1926 and 1930 through STV). By the 4th Count, it became a duel between Roper and Lymburn with the SC candidate being the third-place holder.
Roper was elected, becoming the only CCF MLA in the Alberta Legislature. Roper, as the party's only sitting MLA 1942-45, served as president of the Alberta CCF from 1942 to 1955.
The 1942 by-election could have seen the non-SC forces split under FPTP (so-called vote-splitting), or voters could have shifted their vote according to "strategic voting" (voter mis-representation) so as to not split that vote. But under STV voters felt free to vote as they truly desired without fear of vote-splitting and were not forced to resort to "strategic voting" in order to avoid their vote being wasted. Thus the election showed that SC was not second as it would have looked under FPTP and indeed as it looked in the First Count, but instead was third in popularity behind two non-SC candidates. This was a slap in the face to the SC government, which was seen to be headquartered in a city where SC was not in favour.
Elmer Roper served as an MLA until 1955, during which time he was an effective thorn in the side of the government. Roper later said he believed that SC Premier Manning discontinued STV after the 1955 election in order to keep him from returning to the legislature.
Roper never was elected after FPTP was brought in. In fact in 1959, the first election after STV's discontinuation, nobody but SC candidates were elected in Edmonton districts. This was a much different result than the mixed representation that STV elections in Edmonton had produced during the previous 30 years.
Thanks for reading.
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STV explained with Alberta context
Single Transferable Voting
Single Transferable Voting is put forward by many as a replacement for our present electoral system. STV uses multi-member districts where each voter casts only one vote. This produces mixed representation in each district where it is used, with each party receiving about as many seats as its vote tallies warrants and no one party taking all the seats in a district. As well, voters mark their ranked preferences for individual candidates so the most popular of a party's candidates take any seats a party is due.
This was how it consistently operated in the 46 Calgary city elections it was used between 1917 and 1971. STV was also used by 19 other Western Canadian cities, including the capital cities of all the western provinces. It was used in eight provincial elections to elect Calgary and Edmonton MLAs between 1926 and 1955 and to elect Winnipeg MLAs in 9 elections.
STV, a district-level electoral system, is voter-driven and candidate-based. It is credited with ensuring that every substantial group within a city/district has at least one seat, that no party receives much more than its vote tally; that in each substantial party the candidates most popular among voters are elected; that to win a majority of seats a party must have a majority of votes. These things are not produced consistently under FPTP.
The multi-member districts required by STV can be easily created by grouping all the electoral districts of a city, for example. The number of seats in each city-district will vary depending on the size of the city.
Under our present First Past The Post elections, only one representative is elected in each district and all the votes cast for other candidates are ignored. These wasted votes sometimes exceed two-thirds of the votes cast. To prevent waste of votes, votes under STV are transferable so when placed on less-popular candidate they are transferred when possible to help decide winners. As well, surplus votes received by those elected are transferred to other candidates based on back-up preferences marked by voters. In a five-member district, surplus votes would be those over and above about one-fifth or one-sixth of the votes.
The Single Voting and the vote transfers ensure that 75 to 90 percent of voters participate in determining winners under STV.
Under STV, more than one representative is elected in a district, and a variety of sentiments reflecting the variety of voters' sentiments are represented by those elected. All the balanced representatives elected in districts across a province or the country will combine to create a proportional legislature or House of Commons.
But extreme candidates and small extreme parties do not get a windfall of seats under STV. No party gets much more seats than its vote tally indicates. A small party may get a seat or two that it would not have received under FPTP. But without a majority of the votes it will not take a majority of seats. And the other parties with a combined majority of votes and seats may join together to pass laws approved by a majority of voters. Under FPTP, the leading minority party usually receives a windfall of seats and a majority of seats, thus creating minority rule.
To bring STV into use in any part of a province or the country is as simple as grouping some of our existing districts together to make one multi-member district. This can be done by simply saying that all the districts in a city will be grouped to make one district and then giving the new city-wide district the same number of seats that the old districts had. Or counties or other already-existing territories could be used as base for the new large districts.
Elections in that district would use transferable votes, so a change of look to the ballots and instruction of the voters would be necessary. A voter would mark numbers, as many or as few as they want, instead of an X, but know that only one of his or her choices could be used to elect someone.
The vote count at the polling places would be exactly the same as under the present system except that the number 1s, not the Xs, is the only thing counted. Election officials at the district office would be trained to deal with any vote transfers that may be needed. All of this was done before so it is not mysterious.
And the result is mixed representation from each district, with each party receiving a number of seats relative to its popularity, as demonstrated by first choice or a combination of first choices and transferred votes.
A variety of representatives being sent from each city to the legislature and to the House, and a mixture of representatives being sent from each province to the House would deflate regionalism and generally prevent a province or part of a province being left out of a government caucus.
Voters would have a wider range of candidates to choose from, being able to choose among a variety of parties and a choice of candidates of individual parties. And voters would have liberty to do this, because if the vote is initially cast for an unpopular candidate, it could be transferred to another where it might be useful, if the voter has indicated his or her desire for that to happen. Voters would not be prevented as much by district boundaries from voting with their neighbours or for their neighbour.
STV results in a large percentage of votes being used to help elect the candidates, with a minimum wastage of votes. This produces higher voter turn-out and generally more voter satisfaction.
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