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Tom Monto

Bringing Proportional Representation to Edmonton and Calgary in 2027

Updated: Jan 21, 2023

We can't get pro-rep in the upcoming provincial election to be held in May - well, we could if Premier Smith put her mind to it.


She has control of majority of seats in the Legislature. so she can pass whatever she and her caucus wants - within constitutional limits.


And electoral reform is well within the province's constitutional powers.


The province of Alberta has engaged in electoral reform just by the will of the governing party several times in our past.

We brought in multiple-member districts in Edmonton and Calgary in advance of the 1909 election and gave each big-city voter two votes, and,


We took out the multi-member districts in Edmonton and Calgary in advance of the 1917 election, and gave each big-city voter just one vote, and


We brought in multi-member districts in Edmonton and Calgary in advance of the 1921 election and gave each big-city voter five votes, and


We maintained multi-member districts in Edmonton and Calgary in advance of the 1926 election but gave each big-city voter just one vote and made it a ranked ballot, and


We abolished the multi-member districts in Edmonton and Calgary in advance of the 1959 election, and took away preferential voting and each big-city voter kept casting just one vote but not transferable.


Each time the opposition parties objected and each time no referendum was held.

In fact in history of Canada no electoral reform has been achieved after a referendum.


So Premier Smith or any other premier of Alberta has the proven right to change the electoral system. Obviously that right should be exercised when it the change is to be in the public good.


And fairer and more balanced elections are demonstrably to the public good.


In 1921 when MMDs were brought in in Edmonton and Calgary, the change was done just months before the election.

the 1921 election was held in July and the change to MMDs in Edmonton and Calgary was done as late as April 20, just three months prior to the election. (The election could have been put off another year but in fact, it was held on July 18, 1921, just three months after the re-distribution of seats was announced.) The April 20, 1921 Edmonton Bulletin announced that amendments to the Alberta Legislature Assembly Act and the Alberta Elections Act had been passed by the majority of members in the Legislature.


The move was not to a more fair system but neither was the change particularly regressive. Block Voting in the cities would be just as prone to dis-proportionality and mis-representation as First Past The Post had been. But it was no worse.


(And it was better in that it brought the change to PR in city-wide districts one step closer - the only difference between Block Voting and STV is the adoption of preferential voting and the reduction in the number of votes each voter could cast - from five down to just one.)


So if we try to repeat the timeline of 1921, we look at when the election in 2023 must be held. According to legislation, Alberta must hold the election some time between March 1 and May 31. So if election is to be held mid-May, the districts, in accordance with 1921 schedule, would be announced in mid-February. If the election is to be held on March 1, then the announcement about electoral reform should have been made back on Dec. 1, 2022.


As Smith is not making any sounds about electoral reform - she has never promised to give us a fairer and more balanced system - let's just say electoral reform won't happen before the 2023 election.


So we look at 2027.


Assuming there is no miracle, the 2023 election will be just as warped and skewed as previous elections that have happened in the province since 1959.

We can expect many MLAs to be elected with just minority support within their districts.

We can expect the most-popular party to get about 20 percent more seats than its share of votes.

We can expect the smallest parties to get few or none seats.


Minority victors in local contests in 2019

Edmonton

Edmonton-Castle Downs 46 percent

Edmonton-Decore 48 percent

Edmonton McClung 44 percent

Edmonton -West-Henday 44 percent

Edmonton-Meadows 49.9 percent

Edmonton-Mill Woods just slightly less than half

Edmonton -South 47 percent

Edmonton South West 46 percent

Edmonton Whitemud 49 percent

St. Albert 46 percent

Sherwood Park 45 percent


Others were elected with as much as 72 percent of the vote


9881 was not enough to be elected in one district (Edmonton South), while

8073 was enough to be elected in another district (Edmonton-Ellerslie).


So we see precious little equality of votes.


And overall perhaps half of votes cast will be ignored and not used to elect anyone.


But if we simply lump the Edmonton districts into groups of five

and each voter maintains the single vote that he or she now has,

and we bring in preferential voting,

we would be sure to have much fairer results than we have now.


I know that because Edmonton once had multi-member districts and preferential voting and each voter had just one vote --- the results were much fairer than they are now under FPTP.


Looking at the last time that Edmonton had five MLAs and they were elected in a single city-wide district and preferential voting was used, we see massively different and fairer results.


This was in 1948.


Edmonton in the 1948 election

16 candidates including candidates of 3 parties

(Social Credit (five), Liberal (five), CCF (five)

and a Conservative running under the label Independent Citizens' Association)


Under STV, 17 percent gave a candidate a seat.

three Social Credit, one Liberal and one CCF were elected.

SC Premier received large number of votes in the first count, about half of the votes cast.

Manning's surplus votes were transferred and two other SC candidates (Adams and Heard) received much of them. They were elected in the end.

Mos of the Liberal candidates were eliminated one by one until Harper Prowse, the most-popular Liberal candidate in the first count, eventually received enough vote transfers to pass quota and win a seat.

The five CCF candidates were reduced one by one until Elmer Roper, the most-popular CCF candidate in the first count, eventually received enough vote transfers to pass quota and win a seat.


So if we look at party totals, we see that all the parties who ran candidates saw one or more candidates elected.

excepting the Conservative candidate who received about 6 percent of the vote and received only about that same number through transfers so fell way short of quota.


As well, about 3 percent of the votes were found to be exhausted as the voter had not marked as many choices as the number of transfers the vote underwent.

and two percent were found to be marked incoherently so election official could not discern the sentiment of the voter


Thus party-wise, all but 17 percent of votes were used to actually elect a candidate of the party preferred by the voter in the first count (or someone outside the initial party in cases where vote transfers crossed party line)

Thus 83 percent were used to actually elect someone, sometimes not the candidate most preferred by the voter but to elect someone that the voter preferred over others.


Compare that to the First Past The Post results where sometimes 56 percent of the votes are disregarded when filling the district seat.


If we brought in STV in Edmonton in 2027, we would see this result

(based on votes as cast in 2019)

say we look at five present districts in central Edmonton and group them together and look at votes cast as per 2019 (likely votes will be cast differently in 2027 compared to 2019, but it is a starting point)


Edmonton Central districts

Riverview -- Strathcona -- Highlands -- Centre -- Glenora Total

NDP 12,000 - 15,000 - 10,000 - 14,000 - 6,000 57,000

UCP 7000 - 3000 - 4,000 - 4000 - 5,000 23,000


likely then, the five seats would go three to NDP and two to conservative

or perhaps four to NDP and one to conservative.


Whichever it is, it will be much better balanced result than the five NDP and no seats that UCP won in 2019 in those five districts.


Calgary

In Calgary meanwhile seats were skewed in favour of conservatives in 2019.

say we organize Calgary's 26 seats into 4 districts of 5 and one district of six seats.



Calgary South East region -- 5 seats

NDP conservative

Fish Creek 7000 16,000

Hays 6000 14,000

Lougheed 4000 12,000

Shaw 6000 14,000

South East 4000 13,000

TOTAL 27,000 69,000


likely then, the five seats would go four to conservative, one to NDP


Much better balanced result than the five UCP seats and no NDP seats won in 2019 in those five districts.



We can also look at the Calgary East region six seats

NDP conservative (UCP in 2019)

Cross 6000 9000

East 5000 8000

Falconridge 7000 7000

McCall 7000 5000

Northeast 6000 8000

Peigan 7000 13,000

TOTAL 38,000 50,000


likely then the six seats would go three to conservative, three to NDP

or perhaps four to conservative and two to NDP.


Much better balanced result than the five UCP seats and one NDP seat won in 2019 in those six districts.


So we could confidently expect to see much better balanced and much more fair results under STV than we saw in First Past The Post in 2019.


say we look at overall vote totals

NDP conservative

Edmonton 53 percent 35 percent

Calgary 35 percent 53 percent


Likely NDP will take 11 seats in Edmonton and 8 in Calgary

likely conservatives will take 9 seats in Edmonton and 18 in Calgary.

some variation may occur due to the districting and the 15 or so percent of votes that are neither NDP nor conservative.


so very fair results, especially as compared to just one seat for conservatives in Edmonton and three for NDP in Calgary that was garnered in 2019.


Much different than the lobsided result and artificially-created regionalism that we see today under FPTP.


Easily achieved merely by grouping districts and giving each voter just one preferential vote, same as we had back in the day, from the 1920s to the 1950s.


Let's do it again.


It's too late to do it in 20123 but next time for sure...


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