The 2017 Edmonton city election produced flawed results. But you say we don't hear complaints about the election.
We do hear some complaints about the council though. And the election could be to blame for that. If the elected city council has been even in part satisfactory to voters, it may have been just our good luck.
In the election, most voters were ignored; more than half of the elected city councillors had proven support from only a minority of voters in their ward.
And the election system that will be used for the next election, in just a few months from now, will be conducted using the same flawed system. Any change made since 2017 has not addressed the underlying problem -- the use of non-proportional First Past The Post to elect single city councillors in each ward.
There is no way that a single councillor in a ward can represent the wide range of sentiment held by the residents, nor can they represent the sentiment held by any group that is spread thinly across the city but with no large presence in any one ward. Groups such as this include groups as large as supporters of labour candidates and women who vote for women candidates - and even wise people.
Only through use of multi-seat wards or electing all of our councillors in one singe city-wide district, which creates its own kind of multi-member district, can city council proportionately represent the voters in the city.
Even maintaining wards but adding a few seats for city councillors elected city-wide would provide a degree of fairness to the city elections.
Under Edmonton's ward system the city is spit into 12 different wards, each electing just one councillor.
This division into 12 different contests, and the division of the voters into 12 different sections, means that:
- many votes are wasted --- more than half the votes did not elect anyone
- many voters are disregarded --- more than half the voters did not see their choice elected
- some voters cannot vote for whom they want to see on city council because they happen to live in a different ward,
- it does not produce the election of the most popular candidates -- those who get more votes than others may not be elected.
The 2017 Edmonton election -
Wasted many votes
The successful candidates running for seats on the council received only 96,000 votes cast, while 101,000 votes went to the other - the unsuccessful - candidates.
Seven of the city's 12 councillors were elected with only a minority of the votes in their wards. Dziadyk, Hamilton, Paquette, Caterina, Henderson, Cartmell and Banga were elected despite a majority of voters voting for other candidates.
Paquette was elected with only 24 percent of the votes cast, the lowest percentage of any successful candidate.
Thus the votes cast by a relative few were used to elect the council while the votes cast by the majority were ignored.
Do we know that this waste of votes that were cast - or the fact that 68 percent of eligible voters stayed home - was not caused by the division of city voters into 12 different wards?
Could the fact that voters could only vote for candidates running within their own ward have dissuaded them from voting at all? For some that seems likely.
Did not elect the most popular candidates
A person who received 5282 votes was not elected while a person who received 3455 was.
Aaron Paquette with 3455 votes was elected while Vieri Berretti (running in a different ward) was not elected although getting 5282 votes.
In most FPTP elections, 70 to 35 percent of the votes are ignored. In the 2017 Edmonton election, in more than half the wards the majority of voters were ignored. In one ward 76 percent of the votes were ignored.
And due to the poor system of representation or other causes, the election suffered from low turn-out -- only 32 percent of eligible voters turned out to vote in the 2017 election.
So in the end less than 16 percent of eligible voters elected the councillors.
The election of mayor did see a majority of votes cast go to the winner so that at least was democratic.
Meanwhile there is an easy solution. Let the voter retain his or her single vote but group the wards to form multi-seat wards, say electing three or five councillors. Then there is no way that a single voting block will take all the seats in a ward. Mixed representation representing a large swathe of the population will result, a much fairer result than now where only one segment - in more than half the cases, less than half the votes cast - are represented.
That Single Voting can later morph into Single Transferable Voting, by adding the use of preferential ballots. This would ensure that a high proportion of the votes cast are used to elect someone, if not the first preference then at least someone preferred over the others.
In STV elections, 80 to 90 percent of the votes are used to determine the successful candidates.
It is not so outlandish. For a brief time Edmonton actually used STV in city elections. From 1923 to 1927 - five elections - Edmonton used STV. And in each election it produced mixed roughly proportional results that reflected most of the votes cast.
The city elections were complicated by the fact that the southside was guaranteed two seats on council. Some candidates ran under the label of the Labour Party, but STV elections do not use parties to determine successful candidates. Voters vote for individual candidates.
Party vote totals are not considered to determine successful candidates.
The vote tally of each candidate is compared to a "quota" and to the other candidates' tallies to determine the result. The election of multiple winners in a district ensure that most of the votes cast are represented by the successful candidates, if not through first preference then at least someone that the voter preferred over the others.
In 1923, 70 percent of the first-preference votes cast went to candidates who were elected in the end.
Some of the ballots were marked for many of the successful candidates. And such votes were well pleased with the result.
The question after the election then was to which of the successful candidates should the voter go to if he or she wanted lobby work done. Having more than one like-minded representative elected in the district opened the door to the kind of choice that voters do not have under single-winner FPTP.
As well, three candidates later received some votes from eliminated candidates, so the number of satisfied voters was more than 70 percent, although the exact number is unknown at this point in time.
Alternative Voting is another voting system that can replace First Past The Post. In city elections where STV is used for election of city councillors, the mayor is elected through Alternative Voting (Instant Runoff Voting as it is sometimes called).
In AV mayoral contests, something less than 50 percent of the votes in the city overall are ignored. If AV was to be used in 12 wards across the city, the amount of voters represented would be at least a majority in each war, but there would not be the 80 percent effectiveness rate seen in STV elections.
This difference is inflated when you consider the workings of city hall. Under FPTP seven councillors elected with say 33 percent of the votes in each district would have control, so a voting block of 19 percent of the votes cast could theoretically control city hall.
Under STV, with 12 councillors elected at-large, quota would be 8 percent so a voting block of 56 percent of the vote would be needed to control city hall. (And likely the number of votes cast would increase under STV and thus the numbers of votes required to take control.)
Under STV if there are 12 councillors elected in four three-member wards, quota would be 25 percent of the district vote. Assuming equivalent districts, district vote would be 25 percent of the votes, so quota would be 6 percent overall, so a voting block of 42 percent of the vote would be needed to control city hall.
This is a worse case scenario. Actually in a great many cases, the successful candidate will exceed quota by a good measure.
These numbers are actually more powerful if they are presented in the opposite way.
Under FPTP, 81 percent of the voters can be rendered powerless by 19 percent of the voters.
Under STV at-large, 44 percent of the votes can be rendered powerless by 56 percent of the voters.
Under STV in four wards, 58 percent of the voters can be rendered powerless by 42 percent of the voters.
Democracy is on the side of multi-member districts, single voting and transferable votes - the recipe for STV!
We have science and technology all around us. but are using for our city election a system that was established back in the 1700s if not earlier. the First Past The Post system does not ensure that the various views of the voters are represented. it represents only the view of the largest group in each district. Like I said, this group is the only one represented whether it is a majority or not.
While Edmontonians have a range of view, an assembly that does represent only one group is not representational. Only an assembly that represents the range of of views held by its citizens proportionally is democratic.
Really, the question is whether you believe in democracy or you do not. If you do, only proportional representation should be acceptable.
Thanks for reading.
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On electoral reform in cities
I see two different scenarios for change to PR in municipal elections, depending on current practice:
where Block Voting is already used, which means at-large elections (no wards),
maintain the at-large district and simply bring in some PR voting system -
through reducing number of votes each voter can cast (SNTV, Limited Voting)
or reducing number of votes each voter can cast and bringing in ranked voting (STV)
or maintaining multiple voting but allowing each voter to vote for just one candidate (Cumulative Voting)
where FPTP is used (single-member wards),
group the districts into multiple-seat districts (each of three to nine seats)
and either
maintain that each voter will cast just one vote (SNTV, Limited Voting)
or
maintain that each voter can cast just one vote and bring in ranked voting (STV)
or
give each voter multiple votes and allow them to vote just for one candidate (Cumulative Voting).
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in all cities mayor is elected at-large. PR not possible as mayor is just one post.
city councillors or other boards where multiple officials serve (school boards, board of commissioners, health authorities, etc.) is where PR can come in.
Across Canada, many of them are elected through at-large elections (Block Voting);
and many of them are elected through FPTP.
In Alberta, only three municipalities use the ward system for election of councillors.
all others are at-large
In BC,
Vancouver
10 city councillors, 7 park board commissioners, and 9 school board trustees through plurality-at-large voting.
Victoria
eight councillors. The councillors are councillors-at-large elected for the entire city
Ontario
Ottawa 24 councillors elected in single-member wards. (talk about dividing the city's voters - cracking and packing is very possible!)
London single-member wards
and so on.
Toward municipal PR
The main thing is that provincial government do not stand in way of city getting PR.
after Ontario government opened the door to non-FPTP, London walked through. turning in the direction of IRV unfortunately.
Ottawa voters voted back in 1916 to have PR (due in influence of Sanford Fleming, and past influence of Earl Grey) but Ontario government prevented them from adopting it.
First step would be to get provincial government to get out of way.
Alberta
the story is that the government prohibits cities from having any system using ranked votes, but no city has asked whether the city can combine MM districts (which many have) with single voting (which others use). Each is legal obviously and in combination they would produce SNTV, not flawless PR but sometimes the same votes under SNTV and STV produce the same result. so pretty good.
SNTV suffers from vote waste but no worse than FPTP and no worse than Block Voting.
and results under SNTV are often/usually/generally/more dependably more P than FPTP or Block Voting.
Second step would be to get provincial government to say a municipal government must have PR - perhaps this will be result of court case in 2023 or through public pressure over time (as FPTP is seen to continue to fail and as failures of FPTP lead to heightened sensitivity to drawbacks of Block Voting as well).
I don't know whether the court case will say FPTP is un-constitutional or that PR must come in or something else.
But if it is just anti-FPTP, then we might see cities flock to IRV as the least-radical barely-constitutional reform
(or to Cumulative Voting, which depends on voters plumping, restricted nomination and voter discipline to get minority representation)
Compared to CV, STV is more flexible in avoiding bad effects of vote-splitting and wide-open slates, while party-list PR (possible in sub-city MM districts or in city-wide at-large applications) depends on political parties, something that not all cities use.
STV requires ranked voting - a significant but not un-surmountable change
Party-list depends on party identification.
SNTV requires simple changes mentioned above (through one scenario or the other)
Cumulative Voting depends on voters having multiple votes and being able to vote just for one candidate - something Canada has not seen anywhere in government elections since it was used briefly more than hundred years ago in Toronto school board elections. - but that is not to say that is an un-surmountable barrier.
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