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Tom Monto

Alternative Voting not necessarily a gateway to STV

As anyone reading my blogs probably already surmised, I am a big fan of Single Transferable Voting (PR-STV). Some reformers though think it best to move from the First Past The Post to the system known as Alternative Voting (RCV in the U.S.). Alternative Voting (AV) is like STV in that it uses ranked allots, but unlike STV it does not produce proportional representation. AV has a different take on democracy - that the elected representative should represent the majority. This is different from STV's take, which is that the majority of voters should be represented by a mixture of different representatives. As that sentence implies, AV is used in single-member districts while STV is used in multi-member districts.


In the past, in Alberta and in Manitoba, all MLAs in the provinces outside of Edmonton Calgary and Winnipeg (and two other small cities for short time) were elected through AV. That is true for the period 1920 to 1953 in Manitoba and 1926-1955 in Alberta.


Many at the time viewed Alternative Voting as a gateway to PR-STV.


One district in Canada (St. Boniface) did switch from AV to STV just prior to the 1949 provincial election.


Provincial-level STV was used in three other Canadian cities at that time - and none of their use of STV was preceded by AV.


Two of them (each a full city) - Edmonton and Calgary - had just switched from multi-member FPTP (Block Voting) to STV.


The other city (Winnipeg) had been using multi-member wards and FPTP for each seat separately before making the switch to provincial PR-STV at-large (city-wide) in 1920, then later switching to STV in multi-member districts dividing the city. (Unfortunately provincial-level STV in all three cities was abolished in the 1950s.)


So Canadian history shows you do not need to to go to AV before making the switch to STV, and it shows that even with AV a switch to STV is not inevitable.


Thanks for reading.

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