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Tom Monto

Did Alternative Voting give the UFA an advantage?

Updated: Jul 24, 2021

The UFA brought in electoral reform in 1924, where the MLAs outside the major cites were elected through Alternative Voting.


Did the UFA government get an unfair benefit from switching from First Past The Post to Alternative Voting for elections in rural districts?


That is sometimes the accusation. But AV's required majority actually makes it more difficult to win a seat than FPTP's plurality. Only plurality is needed to win under FPTP (also known as Single-Member Plurality). And at least in Canada's experience of preferential voting, in only a very few instances was the leader in the first count not elected after any vote transfers necessitated by AV.


(Even in the 1955 election, the election that caused the SC government to throw away STV/AV, only in four single-member districts did a SC candidate leading in the first count not go on to win the seat. The government suffered under AV only to the extent of four seats.)


UFA did not win every rural district under SMP in 1921 and it did not win every rural district under AV in 1926.


In the districts it did win in 1921, it won all of them except one with a majority of the vote, and


in 1926 the UFA won about the same number of seats, of course this time with a majority of the vote in each district (at least a majority of the votes still in play at that point in the count) (plus one seat won in Edmonton by a UFA candidate receiving quota (one-sixth of the city vote)).


The UFA did win four more rural seats in 1926 than the 38 it had won in 1921. In all but nine of its 42 rural successes, the UFA candidate received a majority on the first count. In only one of these 42 victories was a UFA candidate not the leader in the first count and thus, all others things being equal, those other 41 candidates would have been the winner if the election had been held using SMP anyway. Thus it could be said that the UFA won one seat through AV vote transfers.


And this is balanced by the fact there was also one turn-over that went against the UFA. In the first count in Bow Valley, a UFA candidate had more votes than either of his contenders but did not have majority of the votes. Under SMP, all other things being equal, the UFA would have won the seat, but that result was not guaranteed under AV. After elimination of the Conservative, the Liberal candidate (initially in second place) accumulated more votes than the UFA candidate and the Liberal won the seat.


So AV does not appear to have given any advantage to the UFA in 1926.


And the picture in 1930 was pretty identical.


In 1930 the UFA won all but three of its seats with a majority of votes on the first count. In each of these three, the UFA candidate was the leader in the first count, and, all other things being equal, would have been elected under SMP anyway.


In this election there were no turn-overs where a UFA took a seat without being leader in the first count nor any contests where a UFA candidate leading in the first count was not elected in the end. (And that was the case not just concerning the UFA - there were no turn-overs in any district where the leader in the first count did not win in the end.)


In AV, the vote transfers, it seems, are meant as a check of the popularity shown on the first count, not necessarily to make any change in the popularity-ordering of the candidates. And on balance, the UFA did not win any more seats in 1926 and 1930 than it would have won if the elections had been held using SMP.


Some accuse the UFA of self-interest in installing AV in the rural districts, but I personally see no justice in that charge.


Outside the major cities, all the seats in the province were elected through Alternative Voting, where the rural voters, like their urban counterparts, cast transferable preferential votes but where majority of the votes in each district was required to win the seat. No easy feat and a requirement that UFA candidate would not have faced under First Past The Post.


So why did the UFA bring in AV in the rural areas?


Why not STV same as was used in the cities?

The Republic of Ireland by 1924 was using STV across its country so why not use STV across all of Alberta?


The situation in Alberta is different from Ireland - and has always been.


Currently there are 160 TDs in Ireland.

Alberta now has 87 MLAs. Back in 1926 Alberta had 61 MLAs. 49 were elected in rural districts. That left five MLAs in Edmonton, five in Calgary and two in Medicine Hat, elected through STV.


Alberta is much larger than Ireland. It is 660,000 sq. kms in size while Ireland is 84,000 sq. kms.


Each TD parliamentarian in Ireland thus on average covers an area of only 525 sq kms. Obviously many represent areas smaller than that and some more than that. But all of Ireland fits inside about six average-sized rural districts in Alberta (if my math is correct).


In Alberta, a rural district (electing one MLA) in 1924 covered more than 13,000 sq kms on the average. (The average district size is at least as large as that still today, if not larger. Alberta has added MLAs since 1926 but they all have gone to cities. The number of MLAs outside Edmonton and Calgary is no more numerous than in 1926.)


In 1924 It was thought (by many) that grouping two or three of these districts together to form a multi-member district would be un-manageable.


And the poor transportation means of the 1920s did support that concern. In those days travel was actually easier in the winter so that is why the UFA held their annual conventions in wintertime. And that is saying something when winters are as cold as they are. -20C is common (but not constant) from November/December to March. Every year there is a day or more where the temperature in Edmonton drops below -34C. So we are talking real cold. Edmonton is Alberta's capital city, located pretty much smack dab in the middle of the province so its weather is not exceptional as compared to the rest of the province. But it's a dry cold and it is usually sunny, so there is that!


Transportation woes were such that In those days some district elections were held later than the rest of the province due to local transportation problems. Other times some districts held their nomination deadlines earlier than elsewhere to allow time for ballots to be printed and distributed in far-flung rural districts. So there were real issues with travel and elections back then.


John D. Hunt, in the hand-out Present Electoral System Condemned that I recently mentioned in another blog, did point out that districts were stacked like pancakes between Edmonton and Calgary and pointed out that the east-west transportation along the length of these districts was not as good as the north-south Calgary & Edmonton Railway and the route composed of Edmonton Trail coming out of Calgary and Calgary Trail coming out of Edmonton (those roads from historic times still exist!) that went across the narrow widths of the districts, and pointed out how grouping such districts would not make the job of a MLA much more difficult than the geography of the existing single districts. But this made too much sense, perhaps. And it was never even attempted.


By 1935 five-seat rural districts were looked at favourably by SC groups, but even by then this went nowhere.


And no rural districts ever were grouped to form multi-member districts in Alberta - or in Manitoba. Manitoba did extend STV slightly - to St. Boniface but only by simply adding a seat to a pre-existing mostly-urban district.


But Alberta never extended STV to any new district in the eight elections STV/AV was used.


Nowadays when cars can go 100 kmph, a district of 30,000 sq kms is obviously more manageable but a district with sides longer than 150 kms and where corner-to-corner travel is a two-hour trip is still something that is hard to sell, even now.


When making multi-member districts there is always concern about loss of local representation. Hopefully increasing awareness of the extreme waste of votes under SMP; and of how some districts have now had rightist - and only - rightist representation without break for as much as 70 years; and of how substantial groups within these districts - sometimes even a majority of voters in these districts - have been denied representation over all these years will put concerns about local representation in the shadow as the benefits of PR are seen to outweigh un-balanced undemocratic SMP results. Here's hoping.


With research we may find debate on why not to extend STV to rural districts, but also it may be just a matter of something generally agreed to on all sides as the way to go and not much said about it. In Manitoba a newspaper mentioned that AV was meant to be just a stepping stone to STV, but even there no extension was ever made (except as mentioned).


The whole concept of STV was just so new in 1920/1923.


Its newness back then may be a surprise to many today.


Tasmania, a world pioneer in STV, had only settled permanently into using STV for State elections in 1909. Ireland first used it for election to UK parliament in 1918 and more heavily after it seceded from UK in 1921. Malta adopted it in 1921.


Those alongside Canada were the big three of STV historically in the world.


STV was used in the first city election in North America only in 1915 (in Ashtabula Ohio) and in Canada (Calgary) only in 1917. So Winnipeg was really incredibly adventuresome to adopt STV for city elections in 1920 and to also adopt it for election of MLAs that same year.


And Alberta was only just behind MB.


And still today those two are only two provinces to ever use STV (or any form of PR) for election of MLAs (aside from Toronto's MLAs that were elected through Limited Voting in 1880s/1890s).


In the U.S., STV or any form of proportional representation has still not been used for state elections or federal elections to this day. (Maine so far has come the closest to Alberta and Manitoba's old-time STV/AV. And this is only just relatively recently. It (on occasion) produces mixed representation in its congressional elections and it does use ranked votes. Unlike most other states Maine does not give one party all the state's electoral college seats simply due to overall state plurality. Its electoral college caucus is made up of mixture of at-large and district members. Its congressmen and congresswomen are elected through Alternative Voting. And that is the closest any U.S. jurisdiction has come to what Alberta and Manitoba was doing a good hundred years ago.)


So I think we should probably applaud AB and MB for what they did do.

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Further to above:

my personal opinion is that partisan considerations were not the reason for the UFA to bring in STV in cities and AV elsewhere.


one thing that I see in my favour - and that others might not be considering - is that the UFA only ever ran one candidate in Edmonton in each election and none ever in Calgary, (there were five seats up for grabs in each place each election) nor did it run for each rural seat so it did not reveal any great partisan greed in that way, by striving to win as many seats as possible.


No UFA candidate ran in four rural districts in 1926, and none ran in five rural districts in 1930.


Perhaps because of this, the UFA left room for other parties to take seats. One defender of the UFA government did state that the UFA's percentage of the rural seats was in line with its percentage of the votes cast in rural districts where it did run candidates so that made the result fair. I am not sure if the numbers bear this out or not. But the UFA did allow other parties to get seats.

A part of the historical background of the UFA adopting STV/AV is this:

the Liberal party had received more than its due share of Edmonton seats under Block Voting in 1921 when it took all the Edmonton seats under Block Voting and, a less well known case, the Conservative party had received far more than its due share of seats in 1917 when that party had taken all the Edmonton seats under FPTP.


So I think we have to give credit to the UFA for bringing in STV in the cities.


If someone says the UFA derived benefit by bringing in STV in the cities, I disagree.


I think we agree that STV does not give or deny special advantage to any party.


So the general accusation made against the UFA can be boiled sown to saying that the UFA brought in fairness in order to deny the special advantage that other parties had received in the non-proportional system previously used. And that that showed partisan self-interest on the part of the UFA.


That is a difficult perception to fight and in fact one that goes against the basic pro-rep PR campaign the PR discussion group is discussing currently where fairness, equal representation, equal power or whatever is expressed as our goal.


If a party in power brings in fairness and that hurts other parties who previously benefited from the use of non-proportional systems (which such a change would), it seems it would (like the UFA) open itself to being accused of partisan self-serving behaviour.


In such a situation, if there is a reform-minded party whose goal is fairness;

and if its opponents benefit from unfairness such as non-proportional systems (and opponents of PR generally always benefit from non-proportional systems),

the party would be put in an un-winnable position - It could choose not to bring in reform and leave unfair systems in place or it could choose to make a fair-minded change and be accused of helping itself.


History sometimes repeats. Likely none of us want our present PR movement to suffer from the sort of accusations that were once levelled against the UFA, especially if they are unfair. So I anyway choose to accord an honourable motive to the kind of electoral reform the UFA engaged in...


If someone says that the UFA derived special benefit by bringing in AV in the rural lands, I say, if anything, it is more difficult to be elected under AV than under FPTP.

The vote transfers under AV are just a back-up system. And usually the leader in the first count goes on to win in the end even after vote transfers.


The requirement for majority is important but sometimes it is achieved on the first count with no special procedure, and usually even if vote transfers are conducted, the leader in the first count wins in the end, but the requirement for majority ensures that the majority will is represented


Part of my historical discussion above did state the fact that AV is non-proportional. And I am not saying it would make a big improvement over FPTP.


I would say that AV is preferable to FPTP in districts where a single-member has to be elected (such as a mayor for example), and STV is fair even if only it is adopted in the cities.


Alberta's history showed STV/multi-member districts to be more fair than FPTP or AV or Block Voting. It is just unfortunate that multi-seat districts were thought to be un-workable.


If someone says that the UFA derived benefit from using the two different systems - one in the cities and a different one outside the cities, I say if it did not derive benefit from STV in the cities (aside from just one seat won in Edmonton that might not have been won under FPTP or BV) and if it did not derive benefit from AV outside the cities (which my previous analysis of 1926 and 1930 elections, I think, showed), I dispute that it could have derived a benefit from the combination of the two.


Once the UFA government chose to retain single-member districts outside the cities, their choice was AV or FPTP and it to its credit chose AV. (Although the systems were different, voters in each cast ranked votes, so there was that continuity, which made public education easier, for one thing.)


In 1956 the SC government to its discredit chose to abolish STV/AV and bring in FPTP.


I still cling to my basic belief that because PR in those days meant multi-member districts, and because the UFA government, for the reasons outlined last time, thought multi-seat districts outside cities would not work, the UFA government could not install PR outside the cities.


As I indicated, Hunt did hold a different view (he thought the "pancaked" districts between Edmonton and Calgary could be made into muitl-seat districts.) Perhaps he was correct; perhaps he was wrong. But his advice on this issue was ignored. We all know cases where governments have not brought in electoral reform despite advice from those knowledgeable on the situation (all too well!)


In some cases the lack of action may stem from self-interest; in other cases just from inertia or political feet of clay or overblown perception of the reasons not to do something and an under-developed perception of the benefits of making a change.


I guess I personally choose the latter as the reason for the UFA decision not to have STV outside the cities. (And until a provincial government in Canada brings in PR outside the one or two or three major cities in a province, the Alberta and Manitoba experience with PR will still be the most comprehensive PR experience anyone in Canada ever has done.)


Did STV deprive the Liberals of seats in the cities?

I would say, in short, no. But STV might have ensured that the Conservatives, the most-popular party, got about its fair share of seats and no more than that, which it might have done under a non-proportional system.

Whether it was fair or unfair of the UFA to make this happen will have to be a personal judgement.


Analysis

Edmonton 1926 18 candidates of four parties and Independents ran in one five-seat district.

Calgary 1926 11 candidates of three parties and Independents ran in one five-seat district.


In 1926, the Conservatives actually were more popular in the cities than the Liberal party, which was a change from 1921.

The STV election result shows this - Conservatives won two seats each in Edmonton and Calgary while Liberals won just one in each city. Labour won one seat in Edmonton and Labour/Independent Labour won two in Calgary. UFA won one seat in Edmonton.


vote tallies by party (based on just first preferences)

in Edmonton: Conservative candidates took 5100 votes; Liberal 4100 votes; Labour 3600 votes; UFA 3100; Independents (mixed) 2400.


In Calgary: Conservative candidates 8800 votes; Liberal 5500; Labour/Ind. Labour 5400; Independent 100.


With only five seats in each city, there was some clunkiness in the system - not a perfect relationship between votes and seats.


The STV vote transfers sometimes were between candidates of different parties and the seat count percentages jumped in 20-percent increments so this meant the final seat counts was not always in perfect step with the initial party tallies.


But the election result in each election in each city where STV was used was mixed and was much more fair than previous elections where under FPTP the Conservative party had taken all the Edmonton seats (1917) nor under Block Voting the Liberal party had taken all the Edmonton seats (1921).


The Liberal party's vote tally in Edmonton were almost enough to give the party two seats, but it did not work out for the party. In the last full count, there were two remaining Liberal candidates (a candidate neither elected nor eliminated). The most popular of the two was declared elected and the other was eliminated with no transfer of his votes being made because all the seats were filled. The eliminated one had accumulated 2200 votes (about two-thirds of quota) and that is as many as he ever got. Those 2200 votes (plus the 1700 exhausted votes) were the only ones not used to elect someone. It was just Liberal Party's bad luck but it did win one seat anyway which was better than any other party but the Liberals had done in 1921.


Looking at the 1926 Edmonton STV election overall we see it was very fair. The number of wasted votes/ignored voters was "only" 21 percent, a much lower percentage than the 62 percent ignored in Edmonton in 1921 or the 48 percent ignored in Edmonton in 1917 under FPTP.


The same sort of fairness was the case in other PR-STV elections held in Edmonton and in the ones held in Calgary.


Thanks for reading.

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