Grande Prairie suffered from low voter turnouts. This was particularly true when the city was split between two districts, with half in GP-Wapiti and half in GP-Smoky.
Only 27 percent of the eligible voters in GP-Wapiti came out to vote in 2008 and only 30 percent in GP-Smoky that same year.
Perhaps the low turnout was partially caused by the unnatural splitting of the city between the two districts.
For one, perhaps many voters wanted to vote for candidates whom they could not vote for because they happened to run in the other half of the city.
Or perhaps, the un-necessary and un-natural spitting of the small city turned voters away. Perhaps because the way the districts were drawn was seen as an undignified fiddle by t he government - a government that had already been in power more than 20 years.
Or perhaps it was just the two-sided malaise caused by numerous consecutive wins by just one party. Since 1971 Grande Prairie, no matter which district it was in, was represented by a Progressive-Conservative. That is, by 1993 a Progressive-Conservative candidate had been elected six times to represent city voters. This was bound to make Conservatives think their vote was not necessary for things to continue that way. And for those who did not support the P-Cs to think their vote would make no difference.
Whether the low turnout was caused by these or not, the joining of the two halves into the new district of Grande Prairie saw voter turnout surge to 64 percent in 2019.
Now a Grande Prairie-ian running in the city cold receive votes from any other Grande Prariei-ian. And the successful candidate would represent the whole city, surely a good thing for clarity and simplicity.
Currently Red Deer is divided not two district each taking half he city and only half hte city. Would joining the Red Deer districts inot a single two-seat district make a difference?
Well, looking at the result in 2019 we see that between the two districts, the party vote totals were thus:
North South total
UCP 12,739 16,159 28898
NDP 4873 6844 8117
Alberta P. 2769 3244 6013
MR* 600 800 1400
Green 300 300.
TOTAL 44,728
*two misc right-wing groups
so if combined with only two seats, it looks like UCP would have take both.
With these same party vote tallies, the district would have to have five seats for the NDP to take one - if the UCP vote was spread fairly equally over four candidates.
Under Single Transferable Voting, if the district had five seats, with 44,728 votes, the quota would be 7455. Then the NDP, with just its own votes, would have taken one seat and the UCP four seats.
If the Alberta Party and the Greens marked their backup preferences to a NDP candidate, then the NDP would still have taken just one seat with a DM of five.
Voter turnout was at 66 and 72 in those two Red Deer districts. Perhaps a redistricting might have encouraged more to come out and vote.
It would be easy to produce more proportionality -- simply group the Red Deer halves together and still give each voter just one vote. This scheme of Limited Voting might result in mixed representation, with a change in voting patterns. If so, it would see the representation of more of the voters than occurs under FPTP in two separate single-member districts at Red Deer.
When Edmonton and Calgary were city-wide districts in the long-ago 1950s, voter turnout was 53 percent, Calgary's was 48 percent. So having city-wide districts - or even STV - would not seem to be a guaranteed prescription for low voter turnout.
Thanks for Reading.
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