Single Transferable Voting is a form of voting that elects a mixed representation reflective of the substantial voting blocks in a district. Using it, there is no way one single group can capture all of a district's seats (unless it has the support of a massive majority of the voters). It was called the English form of proportional representation because it is based on individual candidates not party totals.
It was used in Alberta provincial elections to elect Edmonton MLAs from 1924 to 1956.
STV is fairer than FPTP.
STV fosters fair representation. Firstl pst the post and Block votoing doesnot.
FRom 1905 to 1926 no Labour or farmer or socialist was elected MLA in Edmonton. That was when FPTP or block voting were used to fill Edmonton seats.
But that democratic lockout was broken in 1926, when STV was used to elect Edmonton MLAs for the first time in a general election.
A Labour MLA was elected in Edmonton in 1926 alongside 2 Conservative MLAs, a Liberal MLA and an UFA MLA. This Labour man was the first Labour candidate to be elected in the city at the provincial level, exemplifying STV's effectiveness at electing representation that reflects the mixed sentiment of a district's voters. (Many Labour candidates had previously been elected at the city level, some during the city's brief stint of municipal STV, but none had been successful under the FPTP and Block Voting used at the provincial level prior to 1924, althogh a substantial portion of city votes had been cast for Labour candidates.)
STV though does not guarantee labour representation. When many workers, farmers and reformers moved to support the Social Credit League led by William Aberhart, Labour's popularity at the polls slipped and it did not get any seats in the 1935 and 1940 elections
By 1942, many had left the SC movement, and had turned to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party for effective calls for reform and change.
Elmer Roper, later mayor, running for the labour/farmer CCF party, was elected in a 1942 by-election. This by-election, electing only one, was not STV - it could not provide mixed representation with only one seat - but instead it was held using Alternative Voting, where a candidate needed the support of a majority of the voters to be elected. Roper, unlike the government SC candidate or any others, accumulated that support when the least-popular candidates were dropped out one by one. Their votes were transferred just as under STV.
Roper was re-elected under STV in 1944, 1948 and 1952. In 1955, no leftist was elected in Edmonton. It happened that a few opposition candidates did good elsewhere though. It was then that the SC government dropped STV.
After the 1955 election, Manning's SC government cancelled STV/AV and reverted Alberta provincial elections to First Past The Post. This change started a perod where the Left got only sparse representation.
Under FPTP, in 1959 the Social Credit party took all the Edmonton seats, far more than its due share based on the vote count.
With the cancellation of single transferable voting in Edmonton in 1956, the NDP did not win a seat in Edmonton until 1982. (This is in strong contrast to the steady winning of one seat in Edmonton in each election, from the 1926 introduction of STV in Edmonton to 1952.
The pattern in Calgary is similar. Although Labour and the CCF were not successful in getting a seat in that city every election under STV, after the cessation of STV in 1956, no CCF or NDP candidate were elected in Calgary until 1986.
Over the 30 years after 1955, about 600 seats were elected in Alberta general elections but only seven times was a Left MLA elected to a seat. Only one of these times happened in Edmonton, where the NDP usually got at least ten percent of the vote.
No Labour, CCF or NDP was elected in Edmonton from 1955 to 1982, a period of 27 years. This despite, for example, the NDP getting 13 percent of Edmonton votes in 1971, thus being due two Edmonton seats in that election alone.
Summary :
The Left elected a single MLA in Edmonton in almost every election during the 30 years of STV.
Under FPTP or block voting, from 1905 to 1924 and from 1956 to 1980, in 45 years it elected none.
STV does makes a diference!
Thanks for reading.
=====================
Comments