Effective Voting. THE Basis of Good Municipal Government. AN EXPOSITION OF THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION was published by the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario in 1898.
It explains proportional representation, which at the time meant Single Transferable Voting, the so-called British form of pro-rep.
The 31-page book is interesting partly because the language used is both simpler and more sophisticated than the language we use nowadays to discuss electoral reform
It is also interesting because the writer is so convincing. He also seems so convinced that just around the corner is a future where pro-rep would be used extensively in the glorious new 20th Century. Unfortunately, Ontario never did see pro-rep in elections at any level of government.
And unfortunately, after pro-rep was adopted for city elections in western Canada in the 1910s and despite it doing all the good things that the writer had predicted in 1898, most cities cancelled STV within the first ten years. Careful consideration of the mistakes made back then may help us avoid this unhappy result in the future.
The booklet contains a practical variation on the Gove Plan that I have not seen elsewhere, one that gives a little bit of decision-making power to voters, in a system whose only real criticism is that under it voters do not have the power that they wield under STV. Under both, the waste of votes is much less than under winner-take-all FPTP, so there is no contest that way.
The book's criticism of Cumulative Voting and Limited Voting should give us pause when such systems are considered again today as we edge back into adoption of pro-rep systems once more. If it help us avoid dead-ends that we suffered 120 years ago, then reading old books is worth it.
The following are excerpts from the 1898 Ontario pro-rep book.
I have added information, in square brackets, where I thought necessary.
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Effective Voting
THE Basis of Good Municipal Government
AN EXPOSITION OF THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION.
Issued by the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario.
JOHN IDINGTON, Q.C., President.
G. WESTON WRIGLEY, Secretary, 293 King St. West, 5 Toronto.
(Reprinted from Citizen and Country, Sept., 1898.) [31 pages]
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On the officials of the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario listed here:
JOHN IDINGTON, Q.C., President of the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario. resident of Stratford.
G. Weston Wrigley, secretary of the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario, was son and helpmate of George Weston Wrigley, at the time a well-known socialist newspaperman in turn-of-the-century Ontario, and later of BC.
Wikipedia "George Weston Wrigley" page states: "His son, G. Weston Wrigley, had been taking an increasingly active role at the Citizen and Country newspaper and continued to help with the Canadian Socialist. (He was also active in the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario, helping produce the book Effective Voting - The Basis of Good Municipal Government, Toronto, 1898.)
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Effective Voting - The Basis of Good Municipal Government (Toronto, 1898)
To set the background for the move to "Effective Voting" (proportional representations/STV), the book looks at the way politics is functioning in the fictional town of Prettyfair. This town is set in South Australia but the book points out it could be "any place in Anglo-Saxondom" [the English-speaking world]. Perhaps the Australian setting shows that at least this part was cribbed from the writings of prominent South Australian reformer Catherine Helen Spence.
First the book points out how the wards in use in Prettyfair's elections are inhibiting good people from running, just as ward FPTP elections do today in Edmonton and other cities.
Even a respected temperance man resists running in Prettyfair's elections because the temperance vote, spread as it is across the town, would do him little good in a ward contest.
One politically-minded man pointed out "The ward system is a very poor one; but can you get anything better in its place? If you had voting at large all over the town, it would mean that the party that had even a narrow majority would put in all the councillors. They have tried that plan in the United States." (This is assuming Block Voting (AKA Multiple Voting) where each voter can cast as many votes as there are seats to fill. Under that system, the largest group, whether majority or not, is able to take all the seats.)
[A man named] Goodhead now joined in the discussion.
"You are right; but voting at large [Block Voting] is not the only way. We have about twelve hundred voters in the town—at least, that is the average number who vote—and we retain twelve councillors. Divide one by the other, and you get a hundred votes to each councillor.
Now, suppose you had a system by which any hundred voters in any part of the town could elect a councilman to represent them; how would that work? Say, Backbone, couldn't you be dead sure of a hundred votes if you were running, and had the whole town to draw from?"
"He could get double that number without canvassing a single elector," broke in Footdown, with emphasis.
"And you, Tippelknot." pursued Goodhead, "couldn't you get considerably over a hundred votes, if you were not pinned down to one ward for your Temperance supporters?"
"No doubt of that," answered Tippelknot. "The idea looks good. But wouldn't you waste a great many votes? How could you fix it so that only about the hundred votes would be cast for your man, or at any rate, only enough more to make sure of his election?"
"Oh, that is easy enough. Arrange it so that when the votes were counted, only enough to elect a man would be credited to him, and the remainder transferred to some other candidate indicated by the electors themselves each on his own ballot."
Another of the party here remarked that there were too many councilmen anyhow; that nine would do the business bettor than twelve.
"I quite agree with you," replied Goodhead. "The experience of some cities that have lessened the number of wards goes that way. The abolition of our six wards should make it easy to reduce the number of councillors to nine.
By thus making the whole town one large constituency, electing nine councillors, and electing them by a good plan of proportional representation, any candidate who was a good enough man to command one-ninth of the votes of the whole electorate would be elected. The better element of the community scattered over the whole town, could unite freely to return really good men, in exact proportion to their voting strength."...
"But," objected Mr. Gosloe, "is not the ward system necessary to prevent injustice being done to some section of the town, in the matter of sidewalks or other public accommodations, by reason of its not being represented?"
Clearcut answered him:
"Proportional representation of the whole town achieves that very object better than the ward system does; because if a sectional matter became very important, the people of that section could get a candidate specially to represent their interests. if they were strong enough in numbers; they would not be confined to any hard and fast ward boundaries; and they might draw scattering votes from sympathizers ail over town."
After an animated discussion of details, there appeared to be a general agreement with the ideas of Clearcut and Goodhead.
The book then analyzed why Multiple Voting (Block Voting) was no better than ward elections.
It then put forward the "Hare plan of Proportional Representation" (also known as Effective Voting, nowadays as PR-STV) as the best alternative to both of the other two systems.
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"Multiple vote [Block Voting]
... Let us turn a searchlight upon the multiple vote [Block Voting], and we shall find it a very poor tool by which to construct a good municipal council.
MONOPOLY OF REPRESENTATION.
The Multiple Vote favors a monopoly of representation. That is the first defect that we find, and it is a pretty bad one.
[Say there are] ten aldermen elected by a thousand voters, ...
If six hundred voters unite on a ticket of ten candidates, they can elect the whole council, and the other four hundred voters will not be able to elect anybody to represent them. Each of these six hundred voters has ten votes, and this enables them to place their ten candidates in the ten places at the top of the poll, by giving each candidate about six hundred votes.
The remaining four hundred electors may unite on another ticket if they like, but they are powerless. They can only gave each of their candidates four hundred votes, so that these are all placed below the candidates of the six hundred. Consequently, these four hundred voters are disfranchised and unrepresented, although being two-fifths of the electorate. They are entitled to elect four out of the ten councillors.
Is that fair, or even decent? You know it is not.
A SURE REMEDY.
How would the Hare plan of Proportional Representation work in the above case?
It simply renders impossible such a result as we have pointed out.
The six hundred electors, having only one vote each, have to divide their votes amongst the candidates they want, and can not therefore elect more than six [and sometimes not even that many]. This would allow the four hundred to elect the four aldermen that they are entitled to.
POLITICS ENCOURAGED.
... where general politics are rampant in municipal matters, and two parties are pretty evenly divided, the party tickets will sweep the vote [under Block Voting], and independent candidates will get very few votes because your average voter hates to throw away his vote on a man with a slim chance.
Here we put our finger on one disadvantage of abolishing the wards without providing a better plan of voting - It offers a strong inducement to introduce general politics into municipal affairs. [Meanwhile, at last in Alberta, there is a move on by the provincial government to bring the Conservative party into municipal elections. The mayoral bid by Mike Nickel in Edmonton - he put his name forward to be Conservative candidate in the last provincial election - might be a part of this.]
This disadvantage is offset by getting rid of narrow ward politics and by the election of larger men, but it is there all the same.
TAKING CHANCES.
Another grave objection to the multiple vote is that it mixes and muddles things, and brings in a large element of chance. It is something like throwing dice. There is no telling which side will come to the top.
Many curious combinations of the ten-fold vote take place.
Monopolization of all the representatives by a mere majority of the voters [or even a mere minority of the voters] may result from the inherent cussedness of the method itself, and not from a deliberate or organized attempt on the part of the majority [or largest minority].
A ONE-TENTH INTEREST.
Then, instead of your being represented in a dear and definite way by one distinct alderman in the council, you have, so to speak, only a one-tenth interest in ten different aldermen, who are persons necessarily of diverse views and opinions on some subjects that you are interested in.
Which idea of representation is most in accord with common sense?
AS MUCH VOTING POWER
Some persons have the idea that a man's voting power is lessened by giving him only one vote instead of ten. This is a fallacy.
When everybody else has ten votes as well as you, your additional votes are swamped and neutralized by the additional votes of the other fellows; so that you get all the disadvantages of the Multiple Vote without any increase of your voting power.
MAJORITY AND MINORITY.
It is sometimes said, "Oh, the majority must govern."
But to apply that remark to an election is to suffer from confusion of thought.
Representation is one thing; government and legislation is another.
First get a fair representation of the voters, in your council, then let a majority of the representatives decide when it comes to a decision, Yes or No, on any measure.
And there Is more to be done in any governing or executive body besides the mere Yes and No vote. An intelligent minority of representatives has great weight and influence; its voice can be heard; it can fully and fairly present the views of the voters whom it represents; and it can watch the majority and keep them straight if need be. These things are the dear rights of the minority, and they are denied by the use of the multiple vote.
THE GOLDEN RULE
Take another illustration. A hundred voters in the city are particularly desirous to have a certain man — say Mr. Smith — on the council. The other nine hundred are indifferent or hostile to Smith, or prefer somebody else. These one hundred voters are one-tenth of the electorate, and therefore they are entitled by right to one-tenth of the representation, that is, to one alderman out of the ten.
Under the Multiple Vote, they are deprived of that right. That is, they are disfranchised -deprived of their voting power.
Under Proportional Representation, any candidate having a hundred votes would be elected. Under the Multiple Vote, there is a tyrannous usurpation by the majority.
THE LIMIT OF REPRESENTATION.
It may be asked, Why have not one-twelfth of the voters a right to independent representation, as well as one-tenth?
Because only ten members are being elected and the right of such representation is limited by the number of members.
If twelve members are being elected, then one-twelfth of the voters would have the right to independently elect one member.
They would then have what is called "The Unit of Representation."
The case we are taking is an election in which the unit of representation is one-tenth of the electors. Although in this case a smaller number cannot elect their own man, yet the proportional vote gives them considerable latitude of choice otherwise, as anyone well knows who is familiar with the Hare system.
Wasted Votes
The plan of multiple voting causes a great waste of votes because so many are thrown away on defeated candidates. The larger the number of candidates, the greater is likely to be the wasted votes.
Take as an example the Toronto municipal election of January 1898. In each of six wards, four aldermen were elected by a multiple or general vote on exactly the same plan as the four councillors of a township or village.
Here are the figures for three of the wards, which give a fair sample
Ward Three - total vote for successful candidates 8000; for defeated candidates over 7000. Only 56 per cent of the votes — a little more than half — elected all the aldermen,
thus wasting 44 per cent. This is about the average.
Ward Five - nearly 7000 vote for winning candidates, and nearly 4000 for the losing ones. This ward shows the least waste of any, yet the effective votes were only 62 percent and the lost votes were 38 percent.
Ward Six - this is the worst showing of the lot. The elected aldermen received more than 3500 votes, while the defeated candidates got more than 4000 votes. So that the aldermen in this ward were elected a by a minority of the votes, or 47 percent. The majority of the votes, amounting to 53 percent, were thrown away on defeated candidates.
Is it not time that we changed a method so stupid as to render such things possible? No such results could follow the Hare system.
Chapter 3. A Pretty Fair Town Election
Come with me to the good colony of South Australia [Australia still in 1898 was a British colony, not yet a self-governing Dominion.]
And look with prophetic eye on the holding of the first "Hare-Spence Proportional Voting System" election in the fictional town of Prettyfair.
Nine councillors to be elected at large. 14 candidates.
"Each voter is instructed to mark nine names, or fewer, with the figures 1, 2, 3, etc., in the order of his choice, and was also told that his vote would only count for one man."
A sample voter marks his ballot thusly - marking 1 beside the name of Sydewaux, etc.
This means the voters is saying "The man of my first choice is Mr. L. Sydewaux, so I mark him No. 1 and I want my vote to count for him if he needs the vote. But if he has enough ballots to be elected without mine, or if has no chance of being elected, then I want my vote to count for J.K. Singletaks, whom I have marked No. 2.
If Singletaks does not need my vote, then it is to count for Mr. Square, marked No. 3, etc."
On election night, when the polls close, the returning officer Mr. Countwell announces what he is doing as he goes through the steps of the vote count.
"The first step is to sort all the ballots in accordance with the names that are marked first choices upon them, paying no heed to the other figures. This has already been done in the various polling places, and I collect and calculate the totals for each candidate, as well as calculate the total of all valid votes cast.
This total is divided by the number of seats to arrive at the quota.
Three candidates are elected on the first count by surpassing the quota.
The surplus votes of each successful candidate are transferred.
[In this early version of STV, the last counted votes are simply examined one by one and reallocated to another candidate, based on the next marked back-up preference (but not given to candidates already declared elected). This assumes that each vote has a usable back-up preference. But in case a ballot does not have usable preference, the ballot is simply passed over.)
The votes are transferred until the number of votes that reside with the successful candidate are brought down to the number of the quota.
This is a random non-mathematical method. But if the last counted votes are a random collection truly reflecting the distribution of second choices, which they generally re, then these transfers performed this way produce the same result as if the transfers were done mathematically.]
Then, as not all the seats have been filled, another count needs to be held.
In the next count, the least popular candidate is eliminated, with all of his or her votes being transferred based on back-up preferences.
After several more counts, seven seats are filled and three candidates remain in the running - Jawsmith, Buzzer and Square, none of whom have quota.
On the First Count, Square had been less popular than the other two but enough votes were transferred to him subsequently to place him considerably ahead of both of the others, thus showing him to be more solidly grounded in popular favour. Jawsmith kept his lead over Buzzer so Square and Jawsmith are declared elected, as coming nearest to quota.
"The assembled people of Prettyfair pass a hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Countwell for the ability with which he had handled the ballots and made the explanations. As they disperse, many remarks are made about the accurate way in which the new council appears to reflect the public opinion of the town upon leading issues."
Further pointers
If the seat of any member shall become vacant before the next election, then the unsuccessful candidate having the largest number of votes shall succeed to the vacant position. [In this case that would be Buzzer.]
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Chapter 4. History of Hare-Spence
The system was originally proposed by Thomas Hare, a barrister of old London about 40 years ago. It has been modified by Miss Catherine Helen Spence, an able speaker and writer of South Australia who has popularized the system in that colony, and done much to promote its adoption elsewhere.
In England many persons of distinction have endorsed the Hare idea. Amongst them are john Stuart Mill, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Sir Jon Lubbock and Sir Leonard Courrtney.
In Canada, Sir Sandford Fleming has interested himself in the general question of Proportional representation. In 1892 he published a work of nearly 200 pages dealing with the question.
John Idington, Q.C., of Stratford is also interested and has expressed himself publicly in favor of the Hare-Spence system.
In the U.S. the American Proportional Representation League was founded in 1893. The League includes ... Professor John R. Commons, of the Indiana University, who has written a book on the subject.
Most able and successful practical propaganda work has been done by Alfred Cridge, of 429 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, who is a strong advocate of the Hare system and an expert authority thereon.
Practical working tests of Hare Spence
In the British colony of Tasmania, on Jan. 20th, 1897, ten members were elected to Parliament by means of the Hare system, six from the city of Hobart and four from the city of Launceston. [This was advocated by Hon. A.I. Clark, then Attorney-General. And the system became known as the Hare-Clark system.]
The elections were held on the express condition that Hare was to be used only for the one election in these cities.
[A pamphlet describing the elections was published by the Tasmania Government Statistician, highly commending the Hare system.]
There was also much favourable comment in the newspapers and otherwise.
[And within a decade Hare-Spence (or Hare-Clark) was put into effect permanently, and has been used up to the present time.]
In the Republic of Switzerland, ten of the cantons elect their legislative representatives by means of a system of Pro-Rep known as the Swiss Free List. [This party-list system has also been in permanent use in Switzerland since the late 1800s.]
These three cases are of Legislative or Parliamentary elections. The writer is not aware of any use of Hare at the municipal level. [By 1912 the Hare system would be used in city elections in Johannesburg and in Ireland; by 1915 in Ashtabula, Ohio; and by 1917 in Calgary, Alberta.]
...
Cumulative Voting
In England the governing bodies of the public school have for more than 20 years been elected by a plan of approximate pro-rep known as Cumulative Voting. This, although better than the ordinary method, is a crude and defective plan. Its adoption is probably one strong reason why pro-rep has not made more headway in England. [People disappointed by CV looked askance at all forms of PR. CV proving to be a dead-end frustrated those who wanted real progress.]
...
A growing number of organizations use the proportional plan in their elections. A Toronto example of this is the Trades and Labour Council.
Objections to Hare-Spence
[The method of transferring surplus votes]
The subject of the most vigorous attacks is the method of transferring ballots from those candidate who have a surplus.
The system used in the fictional town of Prettyfair used the non-mathematical random method.
[In STV elections in Canada, transfers of surplus votes were done by one or another mathematical method.
The method used in most city elections and in Alberta provincial elections (and likely in Manitoba provincial elections) was really quite simple although accused of being complicated.
The method used in Calgary city elections was more intricate, akin to the Gregory method. The difference is how many back-up preferences are taken into consideration when doing the transfers.)
In defence of the random non-mathematical method, the 1898 book Effective Voting states that "the law of chance is strongly in favour of a fair average sample of second choices being among the last counted, and the larger the election, the greater is the probability." Likely as well, the more numerous the transfer, the more average it would be.
"As a concrete test, put 500 marbles in a bag, one hundred of each of five colours. Shake them up and draw at random 50 marbles. About ten will be of each colour. If you put 5000 marbles in a bag, 1000 of each colour, and draw out 500, there will be almost certainly 50 of each.
The difference between large and small elections is important because small elections at meetings are a valuable means of diffusing a knowledge of PR. So to ensure randomness, it is well for each voter in a small meeting to vote in duplicate or triplicate - that is, each voter casts two or even three ballots - which gives the same advantage in counting as if there were twice or three times the number of votes.
2. In an average municipal election, the chances are overwhelming against any candidate being prejudiced by taking the surplus at random. [A vote count of more than 800 provides enough random-ness.]
3. The really important transfer of votes are transfers from candidates at the bottom of the poll, whose votes are all distributed. These transfers have no degree of chance ... These votes are usually much more numerous than the surplus votes and sometimes there are no surplus votes at all.
[For there to be no surplus votes, there would have to be no candidates declared elected until all are elected, or perhaps none elected until almost the very last count when all the seats are filled. These circumstances never happened in Canada STV elections. In every one, it seems, one or two were elected in the first count with the final seat not filled until something like the 10th or 20th Count. These are cases where five or more seats were filled. Cases where only two or three seats were filled involved considerably fewer candidates and fewer Counts. But almost always they involved transfers of surplus of votes.]
4, Granting the fullest possible force to the "chance" objection, the Hare system is yet so much superior to the ordinary method [winner-take-all FPTP] that the merits of the system outweigh its drawbacks.
5. "Finally there are two methods by which surplus ballots may be distributed with mathematical accuracy by any persons familiar with the common rules of arithmetic as far as fractions or the "rule of three". [Yes, the "rule of three" is actually a thing. It is still a thing now 120 years after it was mentioned here.]
One of these was used in the Tasmanian Parliamentary elections already mentioned, and the other is used by Miss Spence in South Australia [for demonstration elections, presumably]....
But the "chance" method takes less time and trouble, and we believe it to be good enough for all practical purposes."
Does the counting of votes take very long time in the Hare system?
No. At the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute, in 1896, the votes cast were 958 in number and the count was completed in less than three hours. [Note that the conference in the meantime got on with the business at hand. The vote transfers as required were conducted as pre-set by the voter according to the marked preferences on each ballot. The only interruptions to the conference's work was for the voting and then for the announcement of the results three hours later.]
Is it inconvenient and perhaps dangerous to have the ballots brought to one central point to compete the counting?
Not usually. The tally of first-choice votes can be telephoned from the polling places... If collecting votes seems to be difficult in exceptional cases, the Gove system (described below) can be used.
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Chapter V. Public Indifference in Elections
Thoughtful men deplore the widespread carelessness and indifference to good municipal government, manifested especially at election time, when one would suppose that every good citizen would take time and trouble in an important public matter, instead of having to be persistently canvassed by candidates and their agents and perhaps coaxed to go to the polls. Various superficial and penal remedies have been proposed, amongst them Compulsory Voting and the legal Abolition of Canvassing. Such methods are objectionable and inefficient.
[when many good people do wrong, it is due to a motive.]
To find out and remove that motive, and to supply a stimulus in the opposition direction, is far better than our prohibition and pains and penalties.
The motive, the root of public indifference, is in a system that restricts the choice of the elector to candidates that he does not care about, or gives him occasionally the privilege of throwing away his vote on a man he is interested in but who cannot be elected.
Let us remove stupid obstacles to their doing the right thing before we try to punish them for not doing it.
Take a glance at a city that has spurned the FPTP ward election scheme and now elects nine councillors at-large through pro-rep. Instead of half-a-dozen ward candidates, 16 or 18 men of wide reputation known from one end of the city to the other.
Amongst these there would surely be someone man whose candidature would strongly rouse your interest, and for whom you would make a point of recording your single vote.
Perhaps he might be a supporter of a reform that you believe in; perhaps advocating some special city improvements that you wanted; perhaps a man who is well and favourably known that you would be glad to support him; perhaps even a persona friend of yours. but not living in your particular area, the old ward.
Then the grand feeling of an efficient ballot - the knowledge that your vote would tell, that it would be a real factor in the contest, that it would count either for someone you wanted or against someone you did not want.
This feeling would come from marking 16 candidates in the order of your choice so that if your favourite candidate did not need your vote, it would not be thrown away but would count for someone else.
Besides the quality of the candidates would be greatly improved because they would have to be favourably known throughout the city, not with mere ward reputation. [Actually this goes against the earlier argument saying that support of only one-ninth of the votes across the city or in only one part of the city would be enough to elect a candidate.]
Canvassing [apparently seen as an ill produced by the existing system]
Canvassing would be abolished by pro-rep because each candidate would appeal to that group or quota of the voters spread over the whole city who were in accord with his ideas, and it would be a difficult, almost impracticable thing to tramp the whole city or hire men to do it and pick out the particular nine-tenth of he voters on whom he could rely for election.
Appeal by printed addresses [speeches] on the grounds of principle and character would then be the principal factor; whilst the factor of personal persuasion would become of little value.
Public interest in elections
it is not easy to overestimate the necessity and importance of public interest in elections ...
Everywhere the cause of public indifference is the same faulty method of election, which restricts the choice of voters, prevents their uniting to get the men they want, places a premium on mediocre ward politicians and straddlers, and shuts out radical advocates of social and municipal reform. There must be a strong public interest and even enthusiasm in elections before we have good municipal government.
To rouse that interest permanently, there is but one way - the adoption of Proportional Representation, which has well been called Effective Voting.
[The Initiative and Referendum]
And the first stop in this direction is in many cases the advocacy of the Initiative and Referendum, which is a good thing in itself, and if in force would give a sure means of getting proportional representation when a majority of the people understood the value and desired the adoption of this latter reform."
[Actually, I have not found any case of a campaign for adoption of PR where applying the Initiative (a law giving a group of petitioners the power to force government to either pass a piece of legislation or to hold a referendum on it) or the Referendum (the legal right of voters' referendum to secure or prevent passage of a law passed by a legislative body). Before the campaigns for PR reached a stage where petitions could be assembled, governments generally moved on their own to make the change, or at least to authorize a referendum, if a referendum was required to make the change.]
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Chapter VI Initiative as a Lever [how to achieve PR]
"PR being a good thing, how are the people to get it?
We must look into a related reform known as "Direct Legislation" -- the Initiative and Referendum."
Direct Legislation is law-making by the voters.
The Initiative means that if a certain percentage of qualified votes petition for any measure, the measure must be submitted to a popular vote (referendum) and that it must become law if it gains a majority of such a vote.
The Referendum is a mandatory vote by the people on a proposed law, yes or no. By "mandatory," we mean that it compels the enactment of that law if the majority votes yes.
Two main forms of the Referendum.
One is a vote of the people on a measure proposed by an Initiative. [As well, there are referendums scheduled by government to suss out public sentiment.]
The other is a yes or no vote on acts passed by the Legislature - usually limited to certain classes of acts.
The voters of every municipality are familiar with the idea of submitting municipal by-laws to a popular vote.... But the scope of this popular power is narrowed by the absence of a general provision permitting and giving force to Initiative petitions.
[However Ontario municipalities did have some powers of Initiative in 1898. But the power as provided by one of these laws demanded a petition signed by 20 percent of the voters. The 1898 book Effective Voting points out that to get "a petition signed by 20 percent of the electors is in most cases so hard and expensive a job as to be almost prohibitory." (p. 19)
The Initiative law passed by the Alberta government in 2021 sets a requirement of ten percent of the voters across the province, and to do this within two months. This 280,000 signatures is far more signatures than 20 percent in a single municipality back in 1898. And the achievement of such a herculean task would not be binding on a government.
A constitutional amendment calls for collection of twice that number - 560,000 signatures - and within three months. And you would need the signatures of at least 20 percent of voters in two-thirds of the districts across the province, 58 districts. And constitution being federal matter, there is no guarantee any government would feel itself bound to take action. (info from Graham Thomson, "Here's why Alberta's recall legislation is as mythical as Bigfoot", CBC news online March 19, 2021)]
Albertans did have a law giving them the power of Initiative from 1913 to the 1950s. But the required number of signatures was such that only one time did a group of concerned citizens secure the necessary petition and give a government the choice of either passing a law or holding a referendum on it. This was Prohibition of the sale of alcohol, in 1915. The government chose to hold a referendum. It passed and the government was then obligated to pass the law.]
The 1898 book Effective Voting then pointed out the weakness of the Initiative.
If a group is organized, say to pursue Pro-Rep, and the required multitude of signatures is secured, and a referendum held and a majority of support secured, "reform goes into effect - or rather is put on trial because the same power that enacted it can repeal it."
[For that reason, a majority vote in a referendum (or a pro-PR report of a citizens' assembly) means little if the government itself is ill disposed to Pro-Rep. That is why I think it is important to try to directly convince political parties themselves of the value and fairness of Pro-Rep.]
Effective Voting continued:
"The provincial legislature would rightly object [to being asked] to compel municipalities to try experiments or introduce suggested reforms, but surely citizens of a progressive municipality should have the power to do this if they wish. The door would thus be opened to progress in good municipal government.
Progress must be mainly along the line of experiment. How can people find out whether a theory is good unless they are allowed to try it? First theory, then experimental practice, then adoption - these are the three upward steps to better things."
[Certainly that was how PR-STV was brought in in Tasmania in the 1896-1909 period. First discussion, then the use of STV in Hobarts and Launceston just for one election, then adoption of STV for election of Parliamentarians on a permanent basis later.
In Canada, there were really only two steps -- theory, then adoption. If it had not worked out in practice, STV could have been dropped.
But in practice STV worked well for the election of MLAs in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg and was kept for more than 30 years.
At the city level, STV was found either to be time-consuming and not worth the extra work, or was found to work too well and aroused opposition and agitation from party operatives and wire-pullers who formerly had arranged things for their own satisfaction.]
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Chapter VII. Electing a Mayor or Reeve [p. 20]
Let us clearly realize the distinction between the election of councillors and the election of a single official such as a mayor.
In the former case, the object is to represent all the voters, as nearly as you can come at it.
In the second case, the main point is that the man elected should have a clear majority of the votes cast, and should not be elected by a minority.
[Election by a minority of the voters]
When only two candidates are in the running, simple "X"-voting winner-take-all FPTP elections work fine. But where there are three or more candidates, the successful may be, and often is, elected by a minority of the voters, which is not right.
[FPTP restricts the choice of candidates]
Another disadvantage of the present method is that it restricts the choice of candidates.
When two fairly strong men are nominated, others dislike to enter the field because they might injure the chances of one or the other by cutting into his vote and because many electors will not vote for a man, however good, unless they think he is one of the strongest candidates.
[Run-off elections]
Nomination at party convention is often done by run-off elections. But this plan is open to serious objection.
it consumes much time and tends to log-rolling and other evils. The order of the voter's preference for the nominees ought to be fixed at the time of the first votes, not left to subsequent influences.
Run-off voting is also used in elections of politicians in some European countries.
[Alternative Voting as form of Hare (preferential) voting]
These roundabout and expensive methods are needless. There is a simple and scientific way of getting a majority on one balloting. Use the elimination feature of the Hare system...
[This Alternative Voting system is like the Hare system but without the transfers of surplus votes and without the quota. The Quota idea is carried over as a simple standing rule that to win, you must get more than half of the votes.
As there is only one winner, there are no early and late winners so there is no surplus to be transferred.
The voter sees his vote used, if not for his first choice or second choice, etc., then for his second-last choice or not at all.]
As the 1890 book Effective Voting put it,
"Finally the contest [may be] narrowed down to the two best men in the opinion of the voters, and the better of these two men gets the seat by a clear majority."
"[Alternative Voting] favours the full and free choice of the electors by encouraging the nomination of more than than two candidates."
It goes on to say
"In the district of Queensland, the law provides that the above system is to be used in Parliamentary elections where there are more than two candidates in a single-member district." [This would be of no value in Canada today as every election is a three or more cornered affair. Actually it seems that the law must have operated in reverse. Where there are only two candidates, preferential voting is dispensed with - for it would have no purpose in those cases anyway.]
The book says that to ensure "a clear majority in every case, it is desirable to have a rule that any voter who does not mark every candidate on his ballot with the number signifying his preference will spoil his ballot or rather every candidate except the least desired."
[Thus there would be no exhausted/non-transferable ballots.
Some would object that this would cause many ballots to be spoiled.]
"The obvious answer to this is that the spoiled ballots would be those of the least intelligent and least desirable class of voters - those who were too indifferent or too dull to understand the system under which they were exercising their franchise. Such a voter does a service to the public by spoiling his ballot."
[Alberta provincial STV elections did not have this strict rule, allowing voters to mark as many or as few back-up preferences as desired. And in a city where it was in use, it backfired by becoming a source of grievance - a voter bewailed that under STV he had to vote even for candidates he disliked.]
[Mathematical methods for the transfer of surplus votes]
The Appendix of the book Effective Voting presents two different mathematical methods for transfer of surplus votes.
One, invented by a Miss Martin of South Australia, appears to be the system used in STV elections in Australia today. This involved the transfer of fractions of votes as calculated through the "rule of three," fractions being unified by common divisor or the decimal fractions.
There was also the "Tasmanian method" where surpluses are transferred in whole votes, with the few left-over vote transfers awarded to parties with the largest remainders. [This is the method used in Alberta provincial elections.]
But the book pointed out
"Bear in mind that all this mathematically exactitude is really only needed for very exceptional cases. Taking the average election, the usual method of distributing the surplus by chance would work out the same result....
Apart from actual electoral use, these mathematical methods are valuable for analyzing small elections that have been conducted on the ordinary Hare system."
The present writer took the ballots of the last election of the Educational Committee of the Trades and Labour Council, and made a recount of them, using Miss Martin's method of distributing the surplus. The result was the same as had been produced by the "chance" method in the actual election.
The Gove system
While we regard the Hare-Spence system as the best all-around plan of Effective Voting, we desire to give readers an opportunity to judge other proposals.
One is proposed by Hon. W.H. Grove of Salem, Massachusetts, which has been adopted by the Proportional Representation League of the U.S. as one of the two plans that it recommends...
Its distinctive feature is the way in which votes are transferred from a candidate who has more votes than he needs or who has too few to be of any use. [Under STV, this candidate is eliminated and his votes transferred.]
Under the Gove plan, each candidate announces before the election a list of the candidates to whom he will transfer
1. his surplus votes, if he gets more than a quota, or
2. all his votes, if he does not get votes enough to be elected.
The transfer is to go to the person on the list who has the most votes on his own account already.
[It is therefore necessary for the voter to mark only one name on his ballot. The result of the election can be formulated by the returning official by dealing with statements furnished by the officials at the polling places, instead of the actual blots being sent to the returning officer.
Say a surplus transfer is required because a candidate has achieved quota (calculated by the same method as under Hare-Spence described earlier). The Surplus votes are transferred to the credit of the candidate listed on the successful candidate's published list, who has not yet been elected and who has at that stage the largest number of votes.
Anyone receiving this transfer and getting the quota is declared elected upon reaching quota. And no more transfers are credited to him. The process is continued with vote transfers now going to the person on the list who has the second-most number of votes.
Under this plan, candidates dictate where their transfers go to, to a large degree. But the voters themselves determine who gets transfers because "it is the candidate on the list that has the largest number of votes that has the first claim to transferred votes when these are needed to make up a quota."
[If the list of names is allowed to contain names of candidates running in other districts, then votes can be transferred out of the district, keeping votes among a single party slate. But it is likely that the system as intended kept votes only within a certain district. This would produce more waste of votes than under the broader system.]
"The manifest advantages of the Gove system are :
- the voter has only to mark his ballot for one candidate.
- The counting is much quicker and the ballots have not to be taken to a central place before transfers can be done.
- Any citizen when the first vote is announced can figure out the transfer of votes for himself. At every election a thousand checking pencils would prevent even the suspicion of fraud in the transfers."
[Limited Voting and Cumulative Voting]
Under "Appendix 3. Two Defective Systems" the book Effective Voting describes Limited Voting and Cumulative Voting.
Cumulative Voting
Cumulative Voting is like Multiple Voting in that each voter is given as many votes as there are seats to fill. But these votes can be lumped on to just one candidate or spread around more evenly.
The disadvantages are:
- that it causes a great waste of votes, and
- that by careful and thorough organization, most of the representatives in an electoral district can be got by a minority of the voters.
Speaking generally, it is not well to give several votes to one electors. It really diminishes his voting power, instead of increasing it.
In England, the use of CV in school board elections slowed the cause of Pro-rep according to Alfred Cridge.
In the state of Illinois, the Legislature is elected through Cumulative Voting from districts returning only three members. Such a burlesque on pro-rep only retards progress.
The Limited Vote
The Limited Vote merely gives each elector a few votes less than the number of members to be elected. It was tried for a time in Toronto elections by giving each elector two votes whilst three members were to be elected.
In New York, seven votes were given each voter, while there were 12 members to elect. The plan was abandoned in both places.
The Object Lesson (of the use of Hare system)
To master the principles of the Hare-Spence system of Proportional Representation, there is no better way than to see a meeting-room election...
[To see a practical working of Hare-Spence, the book presented the vote records of the election of the Educational Committee of the Toronto Trades and Labour Council, July 28, 1898.] [p. 28]
61 votes were cast to elect five out of eight candidates.
Quota was 12.
Count a. tallies of votes
Count b. candidates' vote totals in Arabic numerals. Two achieved quota (leaving six candidates)
c. transfer of surplus of the two successful candidates (both done at one time)
d. new running totals (Horwood now has 12 votes. He is declared elected but with no surplus needing to be transferred.)
e. elimination of Dowling 4 votes transferred to others
f. new running totals
g. elimination of Moran (leaving three candidates still in running) Five votes to be transferred. Four were transferred. One could not be transferred because it did not bear a back-up preference.
h. new running totals
i. elimination of Waghorn, being the least-popular remaining candidate. This left just two candidates still in the running and two remaining empty seats. Wheat and Corney are elected as coming nearest to a quota.
The only wasted votes were Waghorn's votes. Examination proved that each of these votes bore the names of one or more of the successful candidates. so the will of the voters who had cast them was satisfied by the result.
There was only one vote that could not be transferred, due to a lack of marked back-up preferences.
This is a good showing. The number of votes that were wasted was fewer than five percent of the 61 votes cast; whilst in the last Toronto civic election the wasted votes were 43 percent.
Even this comparison hardly does justice to the Hare-Spence method, because the 43 percent in the Toronto election were given for defeated candidates only [only one person in each district was elected], whilst all but one of the Hare-Spence ballots contained the name of one or more successful candidates.
You can see also how complete and fair is the representation given by the Hare-Spence system. In electing the Educational Committee, the voters automatically divided themselves into groups of about a dozen, and each group elected the man it wanted, so that every one was represented fully and fairly.
Is not this Proportional Representation, Effective Voting and Scientific Suffrage?
Draft of Proposed Bill
John Idington, Q.C., of Stratford, chairman of the Proportional Representation Committee of Ontario, formulated a bill of pro-rep to the Ontario Legislature to allow pro-rep at the city level... [p. 30-31]
Idington's proposed bill provided for local option in representation, with a view of having the bill introduced in the Ontario Legislature at its next session, and directing the attention of the Legislature to the important question of voting methods in municipalities.
Idington's proposed bill was as follows:
WHEREAS it is expedient to enable certain cities, towns, villages and townships to adopt proportional representation for the Section of aldermen and councillors;
THEREFORE HER MAJESTY, by and with the consent of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, enacts as follows:
1. In every city, town, village and township where the council is elected by a general vote, the council of such city, town, village or township may pass a bylaw providing for the adoption of proportional representation in the election of aldermen of such city, or councillors of such town, village or township, by any method that will result in the election of any qualified candidate who obtains at the election a quota of valid votes, the said quota being found by dividing into the number of valid votes the number of councillors or aldermen to be elected, ignoring fractions, if any; but such bylaw, before the final passing thereof, shall receive the assent of the electors of the municipality in the manner provided for in section 338 and following sections of the Municipal Act.
2. Any council providing by such by-law for the said elections upon said principle of proportional representation shall adopt the system of voting by ballot and all other provisions of the said Municipal Act foi the election of such aldermen and councillors, so far as the same can be made for the purpose operative; and it shall be competent for the said council in their said bylaw to supplement the said provisions by such further directions and provisions as may be found desirable and necessary efficiently to carry out the method adopted for electing such aldermen or councillors in accordance with said principle of proportional representation."
[In 1915 a majority of Ottawa voters did vote to adopt pro-rep, but the Ontario government refused to permit the change.
The Alberta government did allow cities in that province to adopt pro-rep, and Calgary became the first city in Canada to adopt pro-rep, in 1917.]
The latter use of STV in Canada is described in my book When Canada had "Effective Voting" STV in Western Canada 1917-1971.
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