1955 Manitoba first province to get independent district commission - same time it dropped STV/IRV

The province of Manitoba was the first Canadian jurisdiction to pass legislation mandating the establishment of an arms-length, nonpartisan boundary commission once every ten years. Why that province at that time? A confluence of three political developments set the stage for all-party approval in the provincial legislature in 1955: glaring voter inequities resulting from a history of government-controlled redistributions; reform-oriented and innovative opposition parties, soon joined by the premier, pushing a novel idea; and a measure of public and political dissatisfaction with the proportional representation and alternative vote electoral systems then used for provincial elections.

For the first half of the 20th century successive governments in Manitoba had consciously sought to over-represent rural parts of the province in the legislature.

Following the government-controlled redistribution of 1949 (the first seat reallocation in 29 years), the gross disparity between urban and rural Manitobans was abundantly clear:

the province's 228,280 urban voters were represented by 17 members in the legislature and the 224,083 voters in rural Manitoba by 40 members.

[urban representation - 12 MLAs in Winnipeg with voters - 50,000, 47,000, 54,000 in 1949), two in St. Boniface with 30,000 voters in 1949, 3 elsewhere?]

[Manitoba in 1949 had 775,000 population so it seems the writer was talking bout eligible voters.

perhaps by 1953 (or 1955) Manitoba had about 450,000 voters.

1953 Winnipeg 47,000, 45,000, 56,000 total = 150,000

St. B 33,000 voters

three other centres - likely no more than 48,000 altogether

making total of 2228,000 voters]

Urban residents, backed by reform opposition members, called for “fair representation,” by which they not only meant relatively equal district populations [assuming districts have an equal number of members - not the case under Winnipeg and St. B's STV, which requires MMDs]

but also nongovernment-controlled redistributions that were widely seen as open to abuse.

Coinciding with these events was the increasing hostility to instant runoff elections [STV] for provincial legislative members from the city of Winnipeg....

from Electoral Districting in the U.S.: Can Canada Help? John C. Courtney

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_electoral_districting_courtney.pdf

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Courtney mis-identified the system used in Winnipeg and also overlooked that urban voters could have sought fairness not through change to single-member districts, dropping of STV/IRV and independent district commission,

but instead through simply demanding the government give the urban centres their proper number of seats .

then the choice would be

-keeping total number of members at 57, giving perhaps 29 to rural members (converting the 40 districts into 29) (each district having 7700 voters) and giving 28 seats to urban voters up from 17

so perhaps Winnipeg with 17 up from 12 (9,000 voters per seat) (three districts of 5 or 6 seats each) , St. B with four seats, the other three urban centres with two or so each;

OR

keeping total number of rural members at 40 (5,600 voters per member) and giving 40 seats to urban voters up from 17

so perhaps Winnipeg with 24 up from 12 (9,500 voters per seat) (three districts of 8 seats each) , St. B with five seats, the other three urban centres with three or so seats each

OR something not quite so drastic.

The Manitoba Legislature even today has 57 seats so 80 seats back in 1950s does not seem likely.

But the rural-urban balance eventually done under the independent district commission could have used MMDs and allowed STV/IRV to still be used.

the balance eventually established was:

Winnipeg 13 seats (up from 12)

St. B. and St. Vital 2 seats

five other Winnipeg suburbs, each with one seat.

Winnipeg's 13 seats could have been districted as two districts, each having six or seven MLAs;

St. B still with two seats, or combined with the other smaller centres in a district of seven MLAs.

Fair representation for urban voters as a group would have been secured, while retaining fair representation for the voter with the continued use of STV.

(What did happen is this: through clever marketing, the move to single-member districts and the extensive redistricting that that entailed was used to put across idea that Winnipeg went up from 12 seats to 20 seats, a boon to urban voters wanting more fair representation

when in fact Winnipeg, St. B, and two suburbs were given total of 20 seats, only four more than previously.

Such could have been easily accomplished under STV - allocate the four seats to Winnipeg, St. Boniface, Assiniboia or Kildonan, whichever deserved the added representation the most.

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