Regarding Alberta election, I came across other grounds for ER optimism:
If the UCP want to take seats in Edmonton, - it does -- it is odd for a governing party to have no seats in its own capital city - they face an uphill battle.
All agree the Alberta government should have seats in its capital city, and that it is not good that the governing party won only 12 of the 46 sets in the province's two main cities.
How can the UCP get Edmonton seats?
NDP are winning Edmonton districts with significant leads.
But that is not to say the UCP are getting few votes in Edmonton.
the measurement of the lead is relative (as Einstein would say)
a lead of 2000 may mean the winner gets 2001 while the contender gets 1 vote
or it can mean the winner gets 12,000 and the contender gets 10,000 votes.
In Edmonton it is more like 12,000 to 10,000 than 2001 to 1.
In this election the UCP received about a third of votes in Edmonton.
Thus it was due 6 or 7 seats -- PROPORTIONALLY.
A simple switch to MMD-based district-PR system would give them those 6 or 7 seats with votes cast even as they are.
PR in the rural areas would deny the UCP about nine seats it now holds.
Thus, PR would give the government Edmonton seats and not lose them most of their rural seats they now hold.
list-PR overall may achieve this, but MMD-based PR surely would.
UCP could replicate Alberta's old experience and bring in district PR in the cities (citywide districts and STV) while leaving rural areas as single-winner districts using IRV. I am not saying it should do this but only that it could ensure guaranteed UCP seats in Edmonton while likely maintaining its dominance of most rural seats if it chose to bring in that degree of ER.
PR in Calgary would make no difference, as it happened that each main party currently holds approx. its due share of seats there.
IF UCP wants Edmonton seats, PR in Edmonton is an easy route.
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How secure is the UCP government?
Alberta election gave UCP majority government that is it took more than half the seats .
but it is slender - 49 seats out of 87.
Actually less than 49 because Speaker will come out of the UCP caucus and one candidate-now-member who was terribly off the game plan faces expulsion from the caucus. likely she will vote UCP anyway and likely the expulsion, if it is done, will be of short duration.
But for a time UCP (perhaps) will have just 47 caucus members.
this is said to be just three more than majority,
But actually the majority or minority thing is used just to label the type of government
in the working of legislature all that matters is who has more votes.
The UCP can out-vote the NDP opposition with just 39 MLAs, giving it a cushion of 8 or so, a larger cushion than three.
But yes the slender lead in the legislature does mean that a block of say six UCP MLAs, say those belonging to the Trump-style Take Back Alberta faction, could determine the survival or demise of the government.
Their election is likely accountable to the single-winner FPTP - With only one UCP candidate running in each district, voters had no choice if they voted UCP even if they had wanted to elect a more-normal Progressive-Conservative-party-style UCP member.
MMDs and fair voting would allow that choice to voters, as well as producing less artificially-created regionalism - such as the NDP's artificial one-party sweep of Alberta's capital city.
The FPTP straitjacket was actually I think, the impetus of electoral reform back in 1910s/1920s.
as early as 1895 (perhaps earlier) farmer voters felt constrained by the FPTP system. The Edmonton Bulletin of Dec. 30, 1895 notes the feeling of trapped-ness faced by farmer voters in northern Ontario in federal election that year.
in the riding of Cardwell a McCarthy (farmer) candidate was running in the midst of primarily Liberal-versus-Conservative battle.
"It was generally given out that it was a fight between the Liberal and Conservative candidates and the McCarthyite was simply not in it. It was used as a strong card against him amongst Conservatives in a Conservative constituency that that he was making a play for the Liberal party."
(http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/EDB/1895/12/30/2/Ar00205.html)
However as it happened the Liberal voters bolted to him and he won the seat, causing a setback for the government. Edmonton Bulletin notes that protectionism (which farmers opposed) was so strongly opposed, that even though its opponents were strongly divided, still the candidate favouring protectionism (Conservative) was badly defeated.
see Wikipedia Cardwell (electoral district)
Wikipedia William Stubbs (Canadian politician)
As happens to leftist members under FPTP, Stubbs was in office for just one term - when running for re-election, the Conservatives threw money into the race and won the seat.
It is not clear if Stubbs took more votes in 1900 than 1895 and still was not elected
- but it is possible
- FPTP works in such a un-scientific manner that even that is possible.
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Here's a pithy debate on electoral reform circa 1931 Alberta it echoes to some degree our present dilemma - if we get a system that benefits a specific party we are accused of self-serving but if it does not change anything, what is purpose of reform? actually Alberta is prime for PR. the present legislature is fairly nicely proportional but the election was terribly beset by problems of FPTP -- safe seats minorities locked out of rep one party sweeps of a city and a region or near to it low turn out. we can change to PR and the leg. would not even notice -- the balance of parties would hardly change just the regional balance and fairness would increase! Press Review page (assembly.ab.ca) There is a great (pretty good?) line spoken by Brownlee to Conservative opposition member -- that the electoral system is not there to increase minority representation but to form government. This flip from usual view of PR is interesting. Minority rep is important (perhaps as important as majority representation) but most important is making sure that the government - no matter what it is - is the choice of, at least, a majority and reflects its due share of seats based on vote share. in Brownlee's defence the reader should note that Alberta already had STV-PR in cities and Duggan had already said he was opposed to the existing (partial) system of PR and that with fair voting such as through STV-PR, the make-up of the government - no matter what party it is - would be fairly based on votes cast. in the end it was decided not to redistribute rural ridings into MMDs, prerequisite for STV there, and to maintain IRV outside cities, while also still retaining STV in cities (city STV/rural IRV was maintained for another 25 years )
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