Edmonton city elections used to have party labels. Labels would have made for fairer elections if fair voting had been used.

Party labels in Edmonton city elections were common from 1920s to 1980s.

Overview of use of party labels in Edmonton city elections:

starting shortly after Edmonton general strike of 1919, Labour Party and Citizens Committee (later the Civic Government Association) appeared and fought each other for many years.

Then the Civic Progressive Association appeared by 1940

Edmonton Voters Association appeared in 1957 --

Brian Mason, later NDP cabinet minister, ran for that  group)

Edmonton Property Owners Association appeared in 1957 -- 

Edith Rogers , former SC MLA and later CCF activist, ran for that group.

also Julia Kiniski of Cloverdale who ran a record 11 (or 14 times) unsuccessfully before finally being elected in 1963. died in 1969. Her son Julian Kinisky won the resulting by-election. Kiniski Gardens in The Meadows is named after her.

(Naming Edmonton described her as president of the Civic Rights Protective Association. "Kiniski campaigned against wasteful city spending during the two-decade-long domination of municipal affairs by politicians connected to the Civil Government Association." Note that much of that period of one-party rule occurred after Edmonton dropped city-level PR in 1928.)

1959 Civic Reform Association

1961 League of Edmonton Electors

1963 United Votes Association

Citizens Council

1964 Civil Rights Association

Better Civic Government Committee

By 1960s party labels becoming less prominent.

Even after party labels were less prominent, the Edmonton League for Socialist Action ran a mayoral candidate in 1974.

(sometimes leftist groups ran mayoral candidates apparently hoping for a lucky break. Some in the past have pointed out the oddity of giving a high profile to the mayor, who wields just one vote on city council same as any councillor. The city -wide district used for the mayors election sometimes creates odd results - Labour has taken the mayor's seat several times since 1930s, but never since the 1930s has Labour every held a majority of seats on the council. But the odd results have never extended to electing a candidate of an extreme socialist party to the mayor's seat.)

in 1974 two parties ran candidates for aldermen:

E.V.A. = Edmonton Voters Association. David Leadbeater was elected as EVA candidate. He was just 24, (but that was no record for youngest elected to city council- Labour Party radical Margaret Crang set that record when elected at just 23 years of age in 1933.)

U.R.G.E. = Urban Reform Group Edmonton. Percy Wickman ran for URGE in 1974. in 1977  he was elected councillor; in 1989 as MLA. wheelchair bound

1977 

E.C.G.A = Edmonton Civic Government Association emerged again.

EVA and URGE also pursued seats.

Betti Hewes, later Liberal appointee to CBC board, was elected as URGE candidate. (her resignation in 1984 after her appointment to the CBC caused one of Edmonton's few municipal by-elections.)

Percy Wickman this time running as Independent was elected.

Two others elected as Independents.

city only used four wards and each voter could cast three votes, voter voted directly for specific candidate not for party lists.under such a system possible for one party to take all the seats in a ward but voters either did not cast all three votes or did not vote along party lines, so  in 1977 no party ever took all the seats in a ward.

in Ward 1, URGE's Lois Campbell was the top vote-getter but URGE ran no one else in the ward so her supporters' other two votes did not go to URGE candidates. Edm. Civic Government Assoc. took the other two seats.

same happened in Ward 4 where URGE Betti Hewes took one seat for URGE and ECGA took the other two seats.

1980 redistribution of wards. now 6 wards each electing two , each voter had two votes.

URGE took four seats; Independents 7; EVA elected Ed Ewasiuk (future NDP MLA)

URGE elected Jan Reimer, later mayor of Edmonton and to this day only female to be elected mayor of Edmonton.

1983 

R.C.C. = Responsible Citizens Committee appeared. ran two candidates in two separate wards and elected both - Lyall Roper and Lillian Staroszik.

URGE and EVA also ran candidates.

1986 party labels dropped.

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after 1986, Edmonton continued to use two-seat wards and Block Voting.

Block voting meant twice the vote counting and no more fairness. without party labels we cannot determine the unfairness of it but we can see massive number of votes wasted.

Whether that means massive number of unrepresented voters is unclear because each voter casts two votes.

In 2010, Edmonton adopted single-winner FPTP.

and now our elections are a disgrace where more than half the votes cast do not elect anyone.

Successful candidates do not need to have majority support of the voters in their district. The successful mayoral candidate and nine of the 12 successful ward councillors were elected with less than majority of votes in their districts.

Over all the 12 wards, of the more than 210,000 votes cast for councillor candidates, 99,000 voters saw their choice elected, and more than 110,000 did not elect anyone.

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In 2025 we will see party labels used once again.

This will allow the dis-proportionality to be measured but only if parties run fairly full slates.

The centre right party Better Edmonton Party, led by mayoral candidate Tim Cartmell, is likely a re-incarnation of the old Citizens Government party. Despite its stance as a business party, the CGA did run bricklayer unionist Sidney Parsons on its slate in 1940 and he went on to be mayor in 1949, hence one of only a handful of progressive men - and one woman - who have served as Edmonton's mayor.

But if the BEP as a rightist party elects many on council and is strong on pushing back in favour of "commuter rights", then we might see policy lurch such as seeing the pedestrian-strong scramble crossings disbanded and freeways pushed and expanded across the city.

Let's hope not.

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