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Tom Monto

STV multi-member districts produce fair and mixed representation

Updated: Oct 6, 2020

Single Transferable Voting is an alternative to the existing FPTP election we use in provincial and federal elections today. It is more fair than FPTP because it produces mixed proportional representation at the district level and reduces gerrymandering.


It produces mixed proportional representation at the district level through the use of multi-member districts and each voter casting only one vote, transferable in cases where it would otherwise go to waste.


Multi-member districts can be created easily by grouping several of our existing single-member districts. If the new larger district takes on the borders of an already-existing jurisdiction, so much the better. A single provincial or federal district encompassing a city, county or a group of counties would be an example of this.


This eliminates possibility of gerrymandering. whereby opposition votes are divided by district boundaries or are lumped all into one district, either way awarding the dominant party a more than proportional number of seats.*


Using already existing jurisdictions as the basis for the new STV districts prevents gerrymandering. The boundary is already established, it is not set up to serve a party's interests.


Or a group of provincial districts could encompass a single existing federal riding. This moves the gerrymandering to the federal level, where different interests than provincial may have power. The grouping alone mixes the voters previously divided by district boundaries and prevents effective gerrymandering, especially as STV reaps a mixed bag of representatives. (Of course if federal elections begin to use STV, the old single-member federal district would be no more.)


Also, under FPTP seats have to be redistributed periodically to ensure a fairly equal ratio between votes and elected representatives. This would be easy under STV. If a city has now enough population to require an additional representative, you would not need to add a new district in the city, but only add a member to the city-wide district. No redrawing of boundaries with partisan cries of unfairness, no educating voters on which district they now are in...


Such was the case in 1909. Edmonton, a single-member provincial district at the time, needed another member so the government simply gave it another member without changing the district boundary, without splitting the city into two. This though did not involve STV. Voting switched from FPTP to Block Voting where each voter could cast two votes. The same party took both seats in 1909 and 1913 under that system, while the substantial "other" vote had no representation at all.


Such would not happen under STV. Edmonton MLAs were elected in a single city-wide district using STV from 1926 to 1955. In the general elections held during that time, five, six or seven MLAs were elected in the city-wide Edmonton district. Candidates belonging to two, three or four parties were elected each time, reflecting in relative proportion the mixed sentiment of city voters.


Most of this mixture arose from the use of multi-member districts and single votes. Vote transfers only changed the outcome of one or two seats in each election.


The Proportional Representation Review of Jan. 1924 put it well:

"The mistake is often made of supposing the differences in the result made by transfers of ballots are the only difference attributable to STV... The count of first choices under STV records only one vote for each voter in a multi-member district, which is sufficient of itself to prevent any one element from monopolizing the leading places."


The leading places in the first count mostly go on to be elected in the end, so placement of a mixed bag of candidates among the leaders in the first count is important for proportional representation.


This and restriction of gerrymandering are both achieved under STV.



* footnote:

An STV advocate emphasized the negative effects of gerrymandering under FPTP back in 1922: "In considering the practical importance or unimportance of the element of chance that is produced under STV, we may also bear in mind an incomparably greater element of chance that is connected with our usual method of electing representatives. Under that method the voters are arbitrarily divided into districts, each of which elects one member of the representative body.

Under such a system it may make all the difference in the world on which side of your house the division line is drawn. In one district your vote may turn the scale between two candidates and so be of great importance. In another it may be thrown away every time because your candidate is sure to have far more than he needs for election even if he did not have your vote, or it may be thrown away because your favoured candidate always has too few for election even with your vote. In comparison with such an element of chance, that involved in taking surplus ballots by chance under the STV system is of no importance.

Moreover, how the district line is drawn under the old system of election is frequently determined with the deliberate purpose of gerrymandering, that is, the government drawing the lines in such a way as to waste as many as possible of the votes that are in favour of the party not in power. [The U.S. being a two-party system)

(From the Proportional Representation Review, 1922)

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Thanks for reading.

(See my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.)

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