1944/1945 Albertans Army, Navy and Air Force elected of three Armed Forces MLAs - J. Harper Prowse, Loftus Dudley Ward and Fred C. Colborne respectively, each elected with just a minority of the vote
- Tom Monto
- Oct 2
- 2 min read
Following the 1944 general election, Albertans serving in the armed forces were given a chance to elect three MLAs of their own.
Unlike the rest of Alberta's MLAs, the seats were filled through first past the post, and that flawed system again produced massive vote waste.
Prowse was elected with just 18 percent of the Army votes cast. He took just 1,050 votes out of 6,125 votes cast overall.
Prowse later became a Liberal, holding his seat until 1959, then in 1967 he was appointed a senator, serving in the Senate until his death in 1976.
Loftus Dudley Ward was elected with 44 percent of Alberta's Navy vote to serve as the representative of Navy personnel. Later he became a Liberal and ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 1948 in Calgary.
Fred C. Colborne was elected as the MLA for Albertans serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Like in many cases where FPTP is used, he was the choice of just a minority -- he received 21 percent of vote cast -- just 252 votes of the 1207 cast.
The election of these three MLAs is the only case where non-geographical districts were used. I mean that the districts used to elect these Armed Forces MLAs overlapped with each other and within Alberta also over lapped with the districts used to elect the other 57 MLAs. They were not discrete.
Someone interested in the workings of elections might observe that these separate districts were akin to the Maori districts used in New Zealand.
That is the type of thing that might be done to ensure minority representation. More on that in the Montopedia blog:
Something similar could be used to ensure Indigenous representation.
The reserves in each province could be lumped together to elect one MLA anyway.
sort of "affirmative gerrymandering".
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