Open letter to Edmonton mayor and city councillors
Tom Monto
Jan. 8, 2020
Addressing problems
with the existing electoral system used in Edmonton City Elections
by
Adoption of Single voting in multiple-member wards
and
At-large elections of some councillors
The last city election (2017) shows us the inequities caused by First Past The Post elections in single-member wards. Electoral reform is needed here as much as at the provincial and federal levels, which have been receiving so much attention of late. The adoption of single voting in multiple-member wards, or the use of at-large councillors (to serve alongside ward councillors), would go a long way to address the inequities in today's city electoral system.
In the last election, seven councillors were elected with a minority of the votes in their wards. In most of these wards a combination of only two other candidates' votes, if it have been made possible and if voters had voted that way, would have overwhelmed the leaders' lead, and in those cases if they happened they would have seen someone with more general support be elected to represent the ward residents on council.
In more than half the wards the councillors were elected by an average of only 36 percent of the voters in their ward. Thus almost two-thirds of the votes in more than half the wards were totally wasted. In the other five wards an average of 58 percent of the votes elected the five councillors, thus seeing the waste of more than a third of the votes in those wards.
This waste of votes over all the 12 wards amounted to 105,000 votes while the successful candidates altogether received only 86,000 votes.
As well Edmonton municipal elections suffer from low turn-outs. The 2017 city election saw only 200,000 vote out of 600,000 eligible voters, a turn-out of only 33 percent.
The City is holding open houses and discussions on the redrawing of ward boundaries but this would involve a much smaller number of voters than the 100,000 wasted votes and the 400,000 votes not cast. Edmonton should take the opportunity available now to make larger changes that would start to address the full extent of the problem.
The first past the post system, electing a single councillor in each ward, would seem to be largely to blame for the waste of votes and for the low turn-out. Why should voters get out and vote if most of the votes cast are totally disregarded? But there is a way out.
Edmonton should return as soon as possible to a system of voting that it and many other western Canadian cities used successfully in the early 1900s.
From 1923 to 1927 Edmonton used the Single Transferable Voting system, under which a mixture of candidates were elected, reflecting voters' sentiment.
However it seems under the present Local Authorities Election Act, Edmonton cannot adopt a system that uses transferable votes. So until that is changed, Edmonton is constrained in the type of reform that it can bring in if it changes from its present system, but some reforms are possible that would increase the proportionality of the city's elected representatives.
These reforms would do this by providing increased minority representation - the majority or largest single group always does well enough without any help. Representation of minorities -- small business owners, university graduates, ethnic and racial groups, bicycle and pedestrian commuters, seniors, and others -- is very useful for the proper administration of a city. Working families, although a majority of city residents, often have little direct representation on council under FPTP. It is even said that wise, prudent people are a minority in any jurisdiction.
Simply increasing the number of city councillors even using FPTP may result in greater minority representation.
A surer way to provide minority representation is to create new council seats that would be filled by councillors elected at-large, in the city as one large district. This voting, separate from the ward elections, would be based on a multiple-member district covering the whole city, and if each voter had but one vote there is no way that one group could elect all the at-large seats. As well, groups spread thinly across the city would be allowed some election opportunities to show their voting strength, which is impossible when all councillors are elected in wards that separate the voters.
A different way to provide minority representation would be at the ward level through Single Non-transferable Voting.
Single Non-transferable Voting (SNTV)
Converting the city's single-member wards to multiple-member wards, and then giving each voter but one vote for the ward election would see a variety of opinions represented among the ward councillors. One way to create multiple-member wards would be to increase the number of councillors, adding them into the existing single-member wards. (The number of councillors has not increased in more than a hundred years, despite the city's fantastic growth.) Otherwise the creation of multiple-member districts could be done by grouping the existing wards into fewer larger wards.
With existing boundaries, fairly cohesive multiple-member wards could be composed principally of either inner-city or suburban areas -- to make four three-member wards, by joining Wards 1-2-5, Wards 3-4-7, Wards 6-8-11, Wards 9-10-12, or to make three four-member wards, by joining Wards 1-2-3-4, Wards 6-7-8-11, Wards 5-9-10-12.
Under SNTV, the leading candidates would be elected to fill however many seats would be in the ward.
This system would still see some votes wasted, although fewer than wasted under FPTP. Multiple candidates being elected in the same ward would likely mean that a majority of votes in each ward would find homes somewhere among the members of the group of successful candidates.
Most of the remaining waste could be easily addressed by using transferable votes. Unfortunately it seems the present Local Authorities Election Act prohibits transferable voting. (The Act though does not seem to prohibit preferential voting. X voting, the only form of voting permitted under the LAEA, could create preferential voting if Xs were used to indicate preferences in columns headed first choice, second choice, etc.)
Switching to Single Non-transferable Voting may help eventually to open the door to a change in the Local Authorities Election Act that would allow Edmonton to make a slight shift further, to the Single Transferable Voting system that Edmonton used successfully in the 1920s.
Single Transferable Voting works this way:
Candidates run in multiple-member districts, electing usually 3 to 10 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, being voter driven and candidate based, does not require party identification, which suits city's elections. In the absence of parties, party list proportional representation cannot be used. Each voter chooses from among all the candidates which candidate he/she prefers and which ones should be back-up preferences. Voters are at perfect liberty to mix and match among all the candidates, and to cross party, gender, ethnic, age lines as they choose.
When Edmonton used STV, all of Edmonton was one district. There were no wards so no change had to be done in that regard. However canddidates did not have to campaign across the whole city - sufficient support in only a portion of the city was enough to be elected.
Under STV the city continued its on-going pattern of having only half the council up for election each year, thus providing continuity. (Its by-product was an inability to shift the entire membership of the city council at any one election despite any strong change in voters' opinion.) As well, any empty seats among the "continuing" members were filled in the elections so Edmontonians elected between five and seven councillors in each STV election.
With the five to seven seats up for election each time, the amount of the city-wide vote required to win a seat was 13 to 17 percent. Any candidate, whoever he/she was, was elected if they accumulated through first preferences and vote transfers that level of support. There was nothing any other group could do about it. And no single voting block could take all the seats unless it had support from more than 80 percent of the voters city-wide, which no single group ever did.
In each STV election, each voter cast a single vote. Amassed together in the first count they determined the candidates' popularity. Candidates with very large support were immediately declared elected. Many of the lesser preferred were eliminated in subsequent counts.
Ballots were preferential -- each voter wrote numbers on his/her ballot to rank the candidates. This provided back-up preferences to be used if and only if the voter's first preference was eliminated out of the running or was elected (to transfer surpluses). These ranked ballots served the same purpose as run-off elections but without the fuss and bother of holding other elections. Transferability meant that only a relative few votes were lost. Many votes elected highly preferred candidates but if not in most cases they found an ultimate use in helping elect a somewhat preferred candidate over a detested one. (By comparison, as discussed already, under FPTP more than half the votes are often put in the trash.)
The result was mixed representation reflective of voters' preferences and the exclusion of extreme candidates who did not have general support.
Edmonton's adoption and use of STV
Edmonton's adoption of STV was part of a wave of electoral reform in western Canada in the early 1920s. This electoral system ensures approximate fairness of representation. Its adoption was driven by growing labour and farmer consciousness and organization and the hitherto difficulty in electing representatives from that core sector, and other groups such as businessmen, wanting to hold on to at least their proper portion of council seats.
In Edmonton, the council's bylaw committee in early 1922 voted narrowly in favour of calling on council to hold a plebiscite on STV. The majority of the committee, composed of the sole woman councillor and two labour-minded aldermen, out-voted two businessmen. Council moved on it, and a plebiscite was held in conjunction with the 1922 election at which city voters voted to change to STV.
With the plebiscite results in hand, the city formulated a by-law applying STV to the Edmonton election cycle and presented it to the provincial government. That government, which had just brought in STV for the election of MLAs, was agreeable. The 1923 Edmonton election was held using STV.
In the 1923 election 14 candidates ran for six empty council seats all to represent one city-wide district. One Labour and one business candidate were elected on first preferences by exceeding the minimum required to win a seat. Transfers of their 2500 surplus votes then started the creation of formed consensuses. This continued through the elimination of seven lowest-ranking candidates, and one more Labour and one more business candidate were elected by the end of the tenth count. The election was complicated by the guarantee in effect at the time that the southside would elect at least two. At the end of the tenth count, all but two seats had been filled, with none so far going to southsiders. So the two southsiders with the largest totals were declared elected to fill the two remaining seats.
The dependence on formed consensus and overall support forced a turn-over compared to first preference rankings. A candidate who was in fifth place on the first count (but had not achieved the minimum required to take a seat) was not very popular overall. A lower-ranking candidate accumulated more general support and took the seat.
The count took 13 hours spread over a couple days but resulted in a mixed and representative council. This was seen in Edmonton's next four elections all held under STV. The councillors in each of the election were spread over the two main factions - business-oriented candidates and the Labour Party - and seats were distributed in rough relation to the factions' proportion of first preferences.
As well the mayor's elections were contested using transferable votes. But during this period either only two candidates ran for the post, thus securing majority for one or the other without transfers, or many ran but one secured a majority of the vote right off, so transfers of votes never had to be done in mayoralty contests. School board elections were also conducted using STV.
The guarantee of two southside councillors muddied the 1926 election. There was also an on-going campaign against the at-large system (perhaps with dis-empowered powers-that-be behind it). This led to holding a plebiscite in 1927 on returning to at-large Block Voting. This passed and Edmonton's municipal STV passed into history.
By that time, STV had already been put into use in Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, North Battleford, Moose Jaw, Vancouver and Victoria. Calgary adopted STV in 1917 to elect its councillors at-large. Over the next years its voter turn-out rose and rose. Winnipeg adopted STV in 1920. During its successful experience councillors were elected in multiple-member wards. Calgary and Winnipeg kept STV right into the 1960s.
Disregard complicated electoral reform schemes
Despite this proven record, STV is barred to us by provincial law. Facing this obstacle, some propose to embark on complicated electoral reform schemes that do not offer reasonable expectation of improvement over the existing system.
The so-called Broda Count, which gives preferential votes different weights, promises that to be elected a candidate would have to have general acceptability instead of just the support of one single large group. But if one group or another plumbs (only votes for its own candidate) it is more likely to elect its candidate, creating unrepresentative results. If voters learned to plumb, the system would become very like the present FPTP system.
Cumulative Voting, a different alternative to FPTP, uses multiple-member wards and a voter casts as many X votes as seats up for election. It seems to be allowed under present provincial legislation but would give voters and city clerks more work to do with less certain results than single voting in multiple-member wards. The system is open to manipulation, as shown in its use in Illinois prior to 1980. Cumulative Voting is complicated for voters and for city clerks obligated to allocate fractions when a voter does not cast the maximum available votes. It is likely voters would confuse it with Block Voting, the system of multiple voting used in most Alberta municipalities.
The Broda Count and Cumulative Voting may in fact turn out to be dead-ends that would create distaste for any electoral reform. Both systems entail intricate work for voters and city clerks.
Immediate adoption of Single Non-transferable Voting
Reform of our electoral system should be in the form of adoption of an intermediate system that meshes in as easily as possible with Single Transferable Voting, our ultimate goal but now barred to us due to provincial legislation.
This intermediate system is Single Non-transferable Voting, perfectly do-able under the existing legislation and well within the ability of city voters. It simply uses multiple-member wards and each voter casting only a single vote. It requires no political parties and little change from our existing electoral methods. Voters would still cast one vote for councillor but more than one councillor would be elected in each ward.
The one change required is that wards would have to be re-drawn or, more simply, existing ones could be grouped together to create multiple-member wards, as suggested above.
With each voter having just one vote, minority representation would be ensured with the three, or four, largest voting blocks in each ward likely electing one member each. Representation would be mixed and reflective of voters' preference.
(Later with STV, three seats in a ward would allow any quarter of the votes in a district to secure a seat. And it would take at least 75 percent support for any one voting block to take all three seats. Transferability of votes would ensure that large voting blocks would more likely secure multiple seats compared to under the Single Non-transferable Voting system.)
Contesting three seats in a ward would necessitate a ballot containing maybe no more than 18 names, a manageable number for voters. Four seats per ward would likely increase the number of names on the ballot but not unmanageably so - for 30 years Edmonton and Calgary voters handled STV ballots of more than 20 names in provincial elections.
Larger and fewer wards would decrease undemocratic gerrymandering and the splitting of minority group population centres and historic communities (the old city of Strathcona is currently partly in Ward 8, 10 and 11).
Summation
Constrained as we are by the dictates of the Local Authorities Election Act, reform of our electoral system should be in the form of adoption of an intermediate system that meshes in as easily as possible with Single Transferable Voting, the system that we used successfully before, the system that promises to deliver a great improvement over our present system, the system that I envision the city returning to in the future.
Single Transferable Voting for the election of city councillors would be the ultimate solution to Edmonton's problems of little minority representation and low voter turn-out, with the adoption of Single Non-transferable Voting a useful intermediate step.
The adoption of Single Non-transferable Voting, where voters cast single votes in multiple-member wards, and/or the addition of five or six at-large councillors, also elected voters' single votes, would substantially increase the fairness of our city's electoral system.
Thank you for your attention.
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