(part 3 of multi-blog research essay)
Covering how the use of MMDs came to an end.
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End of Multi-Member Districts in Canada
By 1973, New Brunswick was one of the last places in Canada using MM districts. Only NFLD, PEI and BC still used MM districts.
That year New Brunswick changed to single-member districts, electing through First past the post. It has never used MM district since that time.
Already Alberta and Manitoba had moved to single-member districts.
Nearby Halifax, the last federal riding to elect multiple members, had been converted into single-member ridings following the 1966 election.
Saskatchewan had dropped its MM districts in mid-1960s.
Alberta and Manitoba had dropped their MM districts in the mid-1950s.
1974 was the first New Brunswick election in which there were only single-member districts, established by the 1973 electoral redistribution.
New Brunswick's redistribution of 1973 converted all the MM districts into single-member districts and changed the voting system from Block voting to FPTP. (Prior to the redistribution, NB had had four single-member districts. These needed no change.)
After New Brunswick's redistribution, only NFLD, PEI and BC still used MM districts.
Newfoundland was quick to follow New Brunswick’s example, converting to single-member districts in 1975.
The other two would each drop MM districts in the 1990s.
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British Columbia
BC’s last election to use a mixture of MM districts and single-member districts was in 1986.
There were 17 two-member constituencies in this election, the last election to be held with them. Voters in these places were allowed two votes (block voting), and generally used them both on the same party. Only one district elected both a SC and a NDP MLA. This was Vancouver-Point Grey where two women, an NDP-er and a SC-er (Kim Campbell, later a Canadian prime minister), were elected.
All other districts elected either two SC-ers (12 districts) or two NDP-ers (four districts), with no representation given to the minority vote in the district. This helped ensure the government's capture of the most seats. (It also makes the "popular vote," the votes cast, not truly reflective of the sentiment of the voters, due to some voters casting two votes and others only one.)
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Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island (PEI) had two-member districts at the provincial level throughout its history - up to the 1996 election. The 1996 PEI election was the first election in the province's history to not use multiple-seat districts.
Previous to 1996, since 1873, PEI's entry into Confederation, the province had been divided into 15 or 16 districts, each electing two members.
Each district elected a member of the Legislative Assembly and a member of the Legislative Council. In the electoral contests Councillor candidates ran against Councillor candidates; Assemblyman candidates ran against Assemblyman candidates.
(As well, from 1873 to 1896 PEI had three multi-member federal ridings:
King's County 1873-1896
Queen's County 1873-1896
Prince County 1873-1896.
The three ridings covered the whole province. Each elected two MPs. Taking the early Dominion’s Liberal-Conservative party as being Conservative, from 1873 to 1891, each riding elected two of the same party each time, with only three exceptions where mixed representation was elected.
And Queen's had two members from 1904 to 1968.
PEI’s provincial districts were unusual in that they elected their two members in separate contests. Voters in the Legislative Council contest also voted in the Assemblyman contest but not all the voters in the latter voted in the first. And for many years the two members for the district did not sit in the same chamber. But from 1893 to 1996, the two members in each district did sit in the same chamber so that made the PEI districts more closely conform to the usual definition of MM district.
This is how the PEI contests worked. All eligible voters within a district were able to vote in the election of the Assemblyman; landowners within a district were able to vote in the election of the district’s Councillor and of its Assemblyman. That is, a landowner could vote for a Council candidate in each district in which he or she owned property, and anyone with a Council vote also had an Assembly vote in each district. A person owning land in more than one of the 15 (or 16 districts after 1966) could vote many times, twice in each district in which he or she owned land. Thus, landowners, if they were extremely mobile, could theoretically cast 30 (or 32) votes, while a non-landowner could cast just one vote, in the district in which he or she resided. (Later the right of multiple-voting in multiple districts was extended to the spouse of the landowner.) (http://www.revparl.ca/11/2/11n2_88e_Driscoll.pdf)
Each contest was conducted through First past the post.
The old districts made sense on the ground. The province has three counties. Historically each county was divided into five districts so that made 15 districts. PEI had 15 districts until 1966, when a 16th district (Queens 6th (Charlottetown)) was added.
Each district contest sees about 3,000 votes cast. Voter turn-out is high. Historically 80 percent of eligible voters voted. Such small scale representation is the closest Canada comes to direct democracy, with most voters having personal contact with his or her member. (If Direct Democracy is government where collective decisions are made by direct voting contributions of individual citizens, which is commonly held to be the case, PEI may be the closest we come to it in Canada but is still far from being an instance of legitimate Direct Democracy!)
Until 1893, PEI was bicameral with the Assembly sitting separately from the Legislative Council. This made for difficulties when majorities in the two houses were held by opposing parties. Starting in 1893 the two groups of elected members sat together in one chamber. (One of the achievements of the government in this period was bringing in secret voting in 1913.)
In 1893, the right to the property vote and voting multiple times was debated but was retained. They would stay in use until 1996.
In 1996, PEI converted to 27 single-member districts, electing one MLA each, through FPTP. Since then, Canada has not used any multi-member districts at the provincial or federal level.
PEI’s dual First Past The Post elections were not PR. This was shown starkly in 1935 when one party took all the seats in the province. The election was a two-party fight, so the winner in each contest received a majority of the votes cast, whether citizen or landowner. But the result was not proportional - the Conservative Party received 42 percent of the vote but took no seats. This is a stark example of the dis-proportionality that can occur even where the winners receive a majority of the vote in the district. (Note that Alternative Voting (IRV) (what many call ranked votes) under certain circumstances could produce just as dis-proportional results as the result in PEI in 1935.)
And the result under 27 single-member districts has produced dis-proportional results also. The 2015 election was a false-majority election, wherein a party won a majority of the seats but had received fewer than a majority of the vote. In the 2019 election, the Green Party was named Official Opposition for the first time in Canadian history. The Liberal party actually deserved more seats than the Greens but won only two seats so was not named Official Opposition.
And it seems that in the 2019 PEI election, in most of the districts, the winner won with less than a majority of the vote. It seems that in the province’s districts, only six MLAs won with a majority of the vote.
Sampling of first and second candidates:
Souris PC 45 percent of the vote. Lib 29 percent
Georgetown-Pownall PC 49 percent of the vote. Green 28 percent
Montague Kilmuir PC 46 percent of the vote. Lib 27 percent
Belfast Murray PC 53 percent of the vote. Green 27 percent majority win
Stratford-Keppoch PC 43 percent of the vote. Lib 30 percent
Stanhope-Marshfield PC 40 percent of the vote. Lib 36 percent
Charlottetown-Winslowe Lib 42 percent of the vote. Green 31 percent
Charlottetown-Victoria Park Green 41 percent of the vote. Lib 28 percent
Charlottetown-West Royalty Lib 35 percent of the vote. Green 32 percent
Cornwall-Meadowbank Lib 48 percent of the vote. Green 33 percent
Rustico-Emerald PC 58 percent of the vote. Lib 27 percent majority win
Kensington-Malpeque PC 62 percent of the vote. Green 25 percent majority win
Summerside-South Green 44 percent of the vote. Lib 32 percent
Evangeline Lib 45 percent of the vote. Green 31 percent
If PEI returned to multiple-seat districts, but constrained each voter to casting just one vote, the result would doubtless be more proportional than that.
And the small size of PEI districts means that grouping districts is fairly easy.
Grouping districts to form multi-seat districts - is the fundamental base of STV or regional or province-wide MMP. Taking that first step would be easy in PEI.
PEI’s counties could again be the base for a scheme of MM districts.
Queens and Prince Counties are both about 2000 sq. kms. in size.
Kings County is about 1700 sq. kms. in size.
PEI overall is 6000 sq. kms. in size.
Even a district covering the whole province of PEI would be smaller than some of the rural provincial districts used in Alberta.
Alberta is 640,000 sq. kms.
87 districts cover the whole province, but most of these are just in Edmonton and Calgary so cover only a very small amount of the overall territory.
41 districts cover almost all the province - so about 15,000 sq. kms per district on the average.
The average rural MLA in Alberta is alone responsible for an area more than twice the size of the whole province of PEI.
In PEI six MLAs represent Charlottetown. This leaves 21 to cover the rest of the island. Each county could be a multi-member district with 7 MLAs on the average. The 7 or so members would collectively represent an area that is less than half the size of the district represented by one MLA in Alberta. And with 7 MLAs elected through regional MMP or STV, a high portion of votes would be represented - a much fairer result that we see under the present system where as much as 65 percent of the votes cast in a district are ignored.
In the 2019 PEI election, the MLAs were elected with just a relatively small number of the votes.
Some of them were elected with only 40 or so percent of the votes in their district.
the winner in Souris-Elmira received just 1300 votes
Georgetown-Pownall 1500 votes
Montague 1400 votes
Charlotteown-Winslowe 1400 votes
Kensington 2000 votes
This sampling produced an average of 1500 votes.
If this was the same across the province, the 27 MLAs were elected with about 41,000 votes.
But under a STV election where typically 80 or so per cent of the voters see their vote actually used to elect someone, we could expect PEI's 27 MLAs to be elected by about 67,000 votes.
If PEI gave STV a chance, the benefits STV would not have to be proven through statistics.
It would only take a simple polling of citizens - are you satisfied with the result of the recent STV election?
If a majority of about 80 percent say they are happy, then that would prove STV effectiveness.
If only about half say they are happy, then STV had not produced a more fair result than the previous FPTP elections.
But if STV is given a chance, I expect a much larger proportion of voters to be happy - to see that their vote had been used to elect their choice or at least someone they preferred over the other candidates - than is happening today in FPTP elections.
(more info on PEI politics can be seen at:
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What is the ultimate size of the Multi-Member District?
The entire state is the largest possible constituency for the election of state legislators in the U.S.. Just as a province as a whole is the largest size possible for election of provincial legislators in Canada.
PEI is about the only province where this is possible, with 27 MLAs. Other provinces have many more MLAs, from Ontario's 124 MLAs to Newfoundland and Labrador's 40.
As the number of seats increase, so does proportionality but so also does the size of the physical ballot and the burden of counting votes. So the number of seats is set through a balance of the two opposing indices.
MM Districts produce four benefits:
longer legislative tenure (SMD produced this as well)
less gerrymandering
more representative legislature
multi-party system
Silva points out that the extent of these benefits depends on the number of members apportioned to each district and on the kind of electoral system used in the district. (p. 509)
Seats in the Provinces
NFLD 40 MLAs 7 MPs
PEI 27 MLAs 4 MPs
Nova Scotia 55 MLAs 11 MPs
NB 49 MLAs 10 MPs
Quebec 67 MLAs 78 MPs
Ontario 124 MLAs 121 MPs
Manitoba 57 MLAs 14 MPs
Sask 61 MLAs 14 MPs
Alberta 87 MLAs 34 MPs
BC 87 MLAs 42 MPs
total 654 MLAs 338 MPs
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Can province-wide districts work?
As a precedent of how large a multi-seat district can be, we can look at New South Wales (Australia).
In its 2019 election of members of the legislative council, NSW used STV in one multi-member district to elect 21 members. 4.5M votes were cast in NSW in this election.
That number of votes is more than are cast in any province in Alberta.
The number of seats filled through STV in that one at-large district in NSW is more than are cast federally in six provinces. so there would be no hold-up to using STV in a province-wide district at least in those six provinces, if we accept that the 2019 NSW at-large STV election was a success (and all the other 21-member contests held in NSW since 1991 as well).
But the NSW election does not give us precedent to using STV in a province-wide election for provincial elections as there are no provinces where 21 or fewer seats are filled in provincial elections.
But elections in even the largest province, Ontario, could be theoretically held using just six districts. That is, if we were to part from the current belief in single-member representation.
ONTARIO
About half of Ontario's population is within the Greater Toronto Area, currently divided into 52 federal ridings, while the rest of the population is enclosed in the other 69 ridings.
And the provincial district structure is likely much the same.
Federal MMDs in Canada's largest city
Federally, the Greater Toronto Area could be grouped into three districts of 14 seats each (quota would be about 7 percent)
the rest of the province:
6 of the largest ridings would remain single-member districts (the large size of a MM district making cross-district travel very arduous)*
all other ridings (63 of them) could be grouped into three districts. (Quota would be about 4 percent)
or say six districts of about 10 seats each (Quota would be about 9 percent).
The large ballots that would result from high District Magnitude (large number of open seats) would not be too daunting if candidates' names are arranged by party, and the burden imposed on voters voting under preferential voting would not be too heavy if voters had liberty to mark only as many back-up preferences as they desire.
If the same districts were used for both federal and provincial elections, or if one level moves to M districts before the other, if the MM districts were composed of a number of the units of the other, a natural relationship between members and voters and a local culture and network could emerge. Of all the Canadian provinces, this is only possible in Ontario where the number of provincial seats and federal seats are roughly the same. In all other provinces there are many more provincial members than federal members.
Under STV, despite large MM districts, the possibility for local representation could be assured by the knowledge that any locality or corner of the multi-seat riding would elect a local representative if the voters there marked their preferences consistently for local candidates and if they have quota. And elected members would be elected by votes within each district, with responsibility basically only to represent the residents of that district.
* Districts that remain as single-member districts could switch to Alternative Voting. Voters there would cast preferential votes same as voters in the other regions of the province, in order that voters everywhere use the same voting system.That way all voters across the province would cast preferential ballots - marking first preference and back-up preferences if voter desires. Having the same voting system in use across the province would simplify the broadcast of instructions to voters.
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Multi-Member Districts in our future?
Taking Manitoba as a project, how could fair representation be achieved through multiple-member districts?
WINNIPEG -- Under FPTP, in the last Manitoba provincial election (2019), there was considerable dis-proportional mis-representation.
A few multi-seat districts would easily cover the city and with a fair voting system, would produce representation much fairer than that produced in 2019.
Winnipeg
Overall Winnipeg (32 seats): 15 Cons 14 NDP 3 Lib
overall party vote percentages: Cons 37 percent NDP 36 percent Lib 19 percent
number of winners that won with majority of the district vote: 14
number of winners that won with minority of the district vote: 18
Winner's percentage of the vote (high and low): 62 p.c. (Point Douglas) and 38 p.c. (McPhillips)
Number of winner's votes (high and low ): 6075 (Robin) and 2536 (Burrows)
Effective votes by party: Cons 69,000 (67 percent of Cons votes)
NDP 51,000 (51 percent of NDP votes)
Liberal 13,000 (26 percent of Lib votes)
Overall effective votes (votes cast for candidates who were elected):
133,000 votes 48 percent of valid votes
Overall wasted votes (votes cast for candidates who were not elected):
142,000 votes 52 percent of valid votes
But PR would be produced if Winnipeg was divided into say two multi-seat districts:
one of 15 seats Quota would be about 7 percent
one of 17 seats Quota would be about 6 percent.
An odd number of seats in the district is preferred as it allows a party with a slight majority to have a majority of seats easily.
Under STV, about 80 percent or more of the voters in a district would see their vote actually used to elect someone. This is a much higher figure than FPTP. In Winnipeg less than half the voters saw their vote used to elect someone.
Although Winnipeg is a large city (by Canada standards), elected members could easily cross the city if it was one district and easily cover half the city.
Each district, even those covering about half the city, would still be smaller in geographic area than even the smallest rural district. And there would be multiple members to do the job, not just one as under FPTP.
The whole metropolitan area of Winnipeg is only 464 sq. kms. in size.
The average for provincial districts in Manitoba is 11,000 sq. kms.
Leaving out Winnipeg, pretty much all of Manitoba is divided into 25 districts, each represented by just one MLA. so each district outside of Winnipeg on average covers almost 26,000 sq. kms.
(Back in 1899 in the age of horse and buggy, 37 districts covered Manitoba outside of Winnipeg.
If there are large rural districts, which there are, it is partly due to the number of MLAs outside Winnipeg decreasing in number as Winnipeg took a larger portion of the MLAs elected each time.
The same holds true of Alberta. Fewer MLAs represent the area outside of the major cities today as compared to 1917, back when automobiles were made of tin and most roads were dirt.
1917 52 MLAs MLAs outside of Calgary and Edmonton
2019 41 MLAs outside of Calgary and Edmonton
We have more people and more money compared to 1899 or 1917, but only slightly larger number of MLAs overall and fewer MLAs for rural areas.
A basic fairness would be created by researching the largest number of seats for the rural portion of the province ever in the province's history and determining the number of voters in an average district (by diving the total rural pop today by that number of MLAs) and using this as a guide as to how many seats Winnipeg should get, with say an average district in Winnipeg having a third more voters than a rural district.
With Winnipeg using multi-seat districts, there would be flexibility in the number of members the city would have.
The districts could based on the city's corporate limits and on natural lines within the city, such as rivers.
With rural districts being stable, there too organic districts could be drawn. They could incorporate natural boundaries and geographic features.
The districts' boundaries would stay the same. Just the number of seats could change in subsequent re-distributions.
The total number of MLAs would change as population grows. But the shape and size of the districts would stay the same.
Grouping districts should be easily do-able within Winnipeg itself. Certainly the geographic size of new MM districts within Winnipeg should not be a problem.
At the time when rural districts are stabilized, it might be easy to also create multi-seat districts in rural regions. Grouping districts outside Winnipeg into MM districts may be difficult with the existing number of MLAs in the province (57).
Perhaps a small increase in the number of MLAs would ease this process. An increase in the overall number of elected members is sometimes par for the course when moving to a more fair electoral system. And such an increase could help when creating MM rural districts.
When New Zealand moved to MMP, the overall number of elected members was increased by 20 percent.
In Canada too such an increase may be considered a worthwhile trade-off for more fair and balanced representation.
That size of increase would be about 60 MPs in federal elections.
In Manitoba it would be an increase of 10 MLAs.
To balance urban and rural representation, 5 could be added to Winnipeg, where elections would be held in MM districts covering half or smaller portions of the city.
Five additional members could be added outside Manitoba.
We could take the ten rural districts with the largest populations. (Likely these would be the ones smallest in geographic size).
Adjoining neighbours could be paired and each pair (now a MM district) could be given an extra seat.
In the new 3-seat districts that would result, under STV any candidate who received 25 percent of the vote would be elected.
Only if a party had 75 percent of the votes would it take all the seats in a district.
If MM and single voting was brought in within Winnipeg and in ten populous districts outside Winnipeg, the election of representatives for more than half the population of the province would thus be held under PR. Under such a scheme, the voters that are currently represented by 42 of the province's 57 MLAs would elect their members through PR.
Under the scheme, those voters would be represented by 52 of the province's 67 MLAs.
And the depth and nature of that representation would be of a much higher quality than currently under FPTP.
Under such a PR scheme, Liberal and NDP voters outside Winnipeg who are now generally under-represented would see their views better represented in the Assembly than under the present FPTP.
Currently in Manitoba's rural districts, Conservative candidates are winning seats with barely more than half of the vote while as much as 45 percent of the voters get no representation at all. With 3-seat districts and STV used, two or more parties would be elected in many districts.
Brandon East and Brandon West are natural choices for paired districts.
In the 2019 election, Brandon was divided into those two districts and FPTP was used to fill the two seats. 7600 Conservative voters in those two districts took both seats, while 4000 NDP, 1400 Liberal and 700 Green voters got no representation at all.
Under STV, you would expect 80 percent of the votes to be used to elect someone. With Winnipeg's 270,000 votes and about 80,000 votes in the ten current districts outside Winnipeg that would be made into MM districts, we would have 350,000 voters out of the province's total of 479,000 (2019) electing under PR and 280,000 would see their vote used to elect someone.
In the 2019 FPTP election, in those same parts of the province only about 180,000 saw their vote used to elect someone.
But multi-member districts by themselves are no solution to dis-proportional misrepresentation.
The flexibility produced by having MM districts means that if evil is intended, officials can draw a border that best gerrymanders against the opposing party then apportion whatever number of seats the size of the population within warrants.
Small parties can take a seat or two under single-member districts when they might be totally shut out if large MM districts are used - if an unfair voting system is used.
But MM districts means that some balance is easily achieved - by merely restricting each voter to only casting one vote. X voting, the type of voting voters are used to, could be used in MM districts and would often produce mixed representation. It prevents one-party sweeps unless that party has a great proportion of the vote or opposing parties suffer from vote splitting (perhaps due to running more candidates than their vote portions warrant).
Even if that vote is not transferable, the casting of a single non-transferable vote in a MM district would often produce mixed, balanced representation.
STV uses transferable votes and is more dependable than SNTV.
The use of non-transferable votes in SNTV means that parties more popular within a district may get fewer (or no) seats than a less-popular party. The more popular party usually does get more seats but it is not to be depended on. But the use of SNTV in Vanuatu shows that MM districts do produce mixed representation. Mixed representation is more fair than one-party sweeps, the usual outcome of FPTP elections across multi-district regions - or even provinces - or even multi-province regions.
(Information on Vanuatu's 2020 SNTV election can be found at
The use of transferable votes (STV) will ensure more dependable and proportional results. The representation elected in each MM district will be dependably more proportional to the votes cast in the district than the result under SNTV. Parties with less votes than another party will not get more seats than that other party. At least that was the record in Edmonton and Calgary in the 30-plus years that STV was used (based on first count tallies).
Are transferable votes necessary?
The SNTV and STV systems in some cases elect exactly the same people - and seldom do STV final results vary much from the results that would be produced by SNTV.
The drawbacks of preferential voting that is used under STV is only a bit more burden put on voters - although voting along a party line is easy enough, but perhaps more significantly there is the psychological challenge of switching the voting system, where any change appears to be a hard-fought battle.
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In Conclusion
Multi-member districts are key to district-level PR voting systems.
Having more than one member in a district may seem revolutionary and risky - but I hope that the evidence presented in this essay helps the reader see that MM districts are not so out-there.
Tom Monto, Edmonton Jan 2022
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Later remarks:
Some seem to have idea that we inherited the FPTP system from Britain, and that was the way it was - the only way it was. And now those who fight for Proportional representation are trying to bring in something that is totally new and totally un-tried.
But starting at the time of Confederation (or even earlier), multi-member districts, not the single-member districts commonly associated with FPTP, were in wide use. The two original Atlantic provinces in at 1867 - NB and NS - and PEI, when it joined in 1873, all elected most or all of their MLAs in multi-member districts, not in single-member districts.
BC MLAs were almost all elected in MM districts in its first provincial election (1871). and Multi-member district(s) were used in every federal election prior to 1968, starting with the Confederation election of 1867. The last federal multi-member district was used in Canada in 1968. From 1867 to 1968, Canadian elections used one or more two-seat districts. These two-member ridings were: Ottawa 1867 to 1933 Halifax 1867 to 1968 (the last federal riding to have multiple members)
Victoria, BC 1871-1904 (1871 under the name Victoria District) Cape Breton, N.S. 1872-1903 Pictou, N.S.1872-1903 St. John City and County, N.B. 1872-1896 Hamilton, Ontario 1872-1903 In PEI: King's County 1873-1896; Queen's County 1873-1896; Prince County 1873-1896. So as you see, multi-members districts were quite common in 19th Century Canadian elections. And through most of the 1900s as well. And British elections too used MM districts back in those days.
For instance, they used Limited Voting to some degree, co-incidentally starting at the time of Canada's Confederation. The Limited Voting system "was applied in England to constituencies returning more than two members from 1867 to 1885." [Footnote states "the LV was applied to 13 constituencies each returning three or four members and included Glasgow, Birmingham and the City of London." (Phillips, Challenges to the Voting System, 1867-1974, (p. 17)available online: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1860&context=digitizedtheses) British elections might also have used Block Voting in other districts or times as well. The dominance of FPTP, the idea that Canada and Britain always used it before and now pro-PR reformers are trying to bring in something completely new and never tried - like the myth that no suitable alternative exists - is a myth that has wide currency but is not based on truth. It seems those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat... doomed to repeatedly elect un-representative governments!
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The use of Multi-Member Districts in the U.S. is described in my other blog:
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MMDs open the door to fairer elections but do not guarantee it
Some say MMDs necessarily mean fairer elections through each voter having just one vote. But actually I think each voter having one vote should not be taken as read.
All provinces have used MMDs in their history,
and 11 ridings have been MMDs
some provinces have even elected all their members in the legislature in MMDs (albeit mostly in two-member districts)
But in all but 18 elections and in all but 5 districts,
the seats in those MMDs have been done with voter casting multiple votes:
using plurality block voting
or in the case of Toronto in 1886 and 1890 by Limited Voting.
or confusingly, with each seat in the MMD filled by separate FPTP election.
Only in Edmonton and Calgary (1924-1955), and Medicine Hat (1926),
and Winnipeg (1920-1953), and St. Boniface (1949, 1952) has each voter been given just one vote in a MMD.
That is in provincial or federal elections.
STV has been used in city elections as well -- in western Canada anyway --
but there too, where at-large or MM-wards have been used, the great preponderance of elections have been held using Block voting, not single voting at all.
Perhaps 150 elections - in a total of 20 Western Canadian cities or municipalities - used STV while all cities east of the Manitoba-Ontario border did not use STV at any time.
Most used MMDs and Block Voting.
perhaps a total of 1500 - 3000 city elections did not use STV.
To fill out the picture, note that Toronto used Cumulative Voting at one to elect its school board officials.
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The fourth part of this multi-blog essay can be found at :
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