Many Canadians hold the view that the present electoral system produces a House of Commons and provincial legislatures that do not reflect voters' sentiment. The ruling party is always heavily over-represented, with small parties, even those receiving more than ten percent of the vote, often getting no seats at all.
Sometimes the disproportionate results achieved under the First Past The Post (FPTP) system are such that a party takes all the seats in the chamber of power, leaving as much as 40 percent of the voters totally without representation. In the 1935 PEI provincial election Liberals captured all the seats in the province with only 58 percent of the vote. And in the 1987 New Brunswick election Liberals won all the province's seats with only 60 percent of the vote. In Alberta no one party has taken all the seats but in 1963 the Social Credit party took 95 per cent of the seats, 60 of the legislature's 63 seats, with only 55 percent of the vote. Twenty years before that, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a predecessor of the NDP, won only four seats despite receiving 25 percent of the vote, which should have given it 14 seats.
Not only is this unfair to voters who expect their votes to count for something but it has a negative effect on the political system. Quite large minorities are disregarded and hidden by the system, and stereotypes are created by the slanted elections. The seat distribution in today's Alberta Legislature for example hides the fact that in the last election fully 47 percent of Calgarian voters voted for parties other than Kenny's UCP, which took all but three of the seats there, and in Edmonton the same percentage voted for parties other than the NDP which pretty much swept the city seats.
Federal FPTP also inflates regionalism at the federal level. In the 1921 federal election conducted under FPTP, UFA and Labour won all the seats in Alberta, depriving Liberals of any representation although they had received about a third of the Alberta vote. In 1980 Alberta elected only Conservative MPs, although Conservatives took less than two-thirds of the votes in the province. In these cases Alberta had no voice in the federal cabinet where important decisions were made.
FPTP does not perform well in elections where three or more parties have strong showings. Many Conservative MLAs elected in Ontario in 2018 were elected without getting a majority of the votes in their own districts, for example.
Voters' true sentiment are concealed when voters vote strategically for a party that they despise the least instead of "throwing away" their vote by voting for the party they really want to represent them.
These problems were seen in the 1910s and the United Farmers of Alberta was elected government in 1921 in part on a promise to reform the system. Three years later it did so, adopting a system that had already proven its worth for decades in Australia. This system was -- the Single Transferable Vote.
The Single Transferable Vote (STV) works this way:
Candidates run in multiple-member districts, electing usually 3 to 7 members in a district.
Each voter casts a single vote but marks back-up preferences on the ballot.
The ballots in a district are counted and sorted. Some votes elect one or more candidates on account of specific support. The surplus votes not needed by the winners are transferred. Some go to candidates of the same party to further create proportionality of representation. Some go to candidates of other parties. These votes plus others transferred from eliminated low-ranking candidates are used to elect the best of the rest through formed consensus among the remaining voters.
STV maintains an important benefit of FPTP -- local representation
STV prunes out unpopular candidates. A candidate must get at least 12 percent of the district vote to be elected, in most cases.
Relatively few votes are wasted under STV. If not used to elect a candidate, they are transferred to back-up preferences.
Unlike under FPTP, representatives under STV can count on secure support from their supporters. Slight shifts in voter sentiment cause only slight shifts in representation. Under FPTP, slight fluctuations in voter sentiment cause major shifts in the composition of the legislative chamber. The Alberta NDP for example lost only a fifth of its vote percentage between the 2015 and the 2019 elections but lost half its seats. Meanwhile the Alberta Party in 2019 collected more votes than the NDP lost and won no seats at all.
STV has deep roots in Canada. Earl Grey, who gave us the CFL's Grey Cup when he was governor-general, was a strong advocate of STV. He oversaw a coalminers' union election using the system in 1885.
MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary were elected through STV from 1924 to 1956.
From the adoption of STV, the MLAs in the two large cities represented three or four parties, instead of the sweep of all seats that a single party had achieved before.
STVs effectiveness at proportional representation is seen by the fact that in 1955 half the Edmonton/Calgary seats were taken by government MLAs, and half by opposition. In the next election after the cancellation of STV, only one opposition candidate was elected in the two cities; the rest of the cities' seats were all taken by government candidates. This result showed well why the government had changed the system.
To bring the STV system back into use requires two simple changes:
A re-drawing of city district boundaries so that the voters in each city vote in a single district electing the same number of MLAs as before, if that number is not more than ten at the most. Otherwise divide a city into multiple-member districts that cover segments of the city, to elect preferably 3 to 7 MLAs in a single district;
And,
Educate voters and election officials how to use preferential balloting.
STV is not foreign to the Canadian political system -- it was after all used for 30 years in Alberta. It uses existing political boundaries in many cases -- gerrymandering is not possible where city borders are used, and gerrymandering is much less effective where large segments of cities are used to compose multiple-member districts.
The number of MLAs in the legislature does not have to change (although simply increasing the number of MLAs would itself effect an increase in proportionality).
On election night as soon as the first count is finished, some candidates would know of their victory, same as all do now, while the fate of some of the seats may take a couple days. But many believe that true representation is worth that small delay.
The count and vote transfers are not very complicated - they were accomplished quite properly in the old days without computers or calculators.
Referendum and citizens' assemblies were not used to bring STV in 1924 and they are not necessary today. In fact, whatever voters decide in a referendum it will be the government that puts their proposal into effect and watches over its performance. The limits of referendum is seen with the Brexit schmozzle -- the people voted for a loose proposal and the government is having problems enacting it. The same could easily happen with electoral reform.
A loosely-worded referendum question on a complicated representation system puts undue stress on a government to hammer out its meaning and pass a low to that effect, especially if a government is not all that happy about doing so anyway.
Single Transferable Voting should be a plank of any people-oriented democratic party. Once elected, they should then bring it in. Its results will speak for themselves, same as they did from the 1920s to the 1950s.
A call for STV is clear. If any confusion exists, a quick referral to the system that was used in Alberta for 30 years is simple enough.
STV is simple to establish, only requiring changes to district boundaries and the type of ballots used. No administrative appointment of members, no layering of different types of representatives, no administrative elimination of parties with too little support. These are required under most Mixed Member Proportional system.
STV is flexible, able to both elect a variety of parties and to use voters preferences to form consensus-based voting blocks that prune out unpopular extreme candidates within parties and prune out unpopular extreme parties altogether.
Relatively few votes are wasted -- almost all votes are used to elect someone.
Voter-driven and candidate-based, Single Transferable Voting proved itself for 30 years.
It is time to bring it back.
--- By Tom Monto (Email: montotom@yahoo.ca blogsite: montopedia) ---
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