Consensus-style design making is a tradition in many Native cultures. Proportional Representation is in line with that line of thinking.
And that is why if consensus, wider democratic practices or higher rate of voter turnout is any part of the aspirations of a First Nations, I believe PR should be the system used in its elections.
PR says that each voting blocks should get its due share of seats - which means that every substantial group will elect at least one spokesperson.
And that allows each group to be heard.
The vote in the chamber still might be decided by a majority vote among the elected members, but at least all voices as much as possible will have been heard.
Say we take a First Nations that elects a chief and ten councillors.
and say we decide to use Single Transferable Voting as the form of PR to use. It has the advantage of having voters vote directly for candidates and for being useful in both contests where party labels are used and where they are not used.
Using STV means each voter gets one vote. This might seem to be disempowering the voters who perhaps were used to casting ten votes in each election before.
But actually it empowers them - for under the previous system - which I assume to be either single-winner First Past The Post or Block Voting - most voters likely found their votes did not produce any representation - only the largest group got all the seats and the voter likely found himself or herself not among the largest group.
Block Voting - When each voter had ten votes, whole voting blocks, with perhaps a third of the vote, got no represention at all, and overall perhaps more votes were ignored than were used to elect anyone. and an unrepresented group does not have a voice in the chamber.
And single-winner First Past The Post or Block Voting also often means more than half of votes in a district are not used to elect anyone.
Under PR, about 80 to 90 percent of the votes are used to elect someone. That encourages voters to get out and vote. Winnipeg when it first used STV to elect its ten MLAs in 1920 experienced 76 percent turnout, the highest rate up to that time. Other jurisdictions that use PR in general also have higher turnouts than jurisdictions using non-proportional methods. And those effective votes are then the base for a fair allocation of seats.
Under STV, seat are allocated to candidates who achieve quota (and then the candidate's surplus votes are transferred if possible to enable them to be used to elect someone else). And when the field of candidates is thinned to one more than the number of remaining open seats, the most-popular are elected. All very fair.
Under STV, where ten are elected, every candidate that receives more than 9 percent of the vote will be elected, and there is nothing the other voters can do about it.
And if seats are not filled immediately, which hardly ever happens, some of the candidates who have no chance to be elected will have their names eliminated and their supporters' votes are given chance to move to help elect another candidate - someone who is preferred by the voter, just not as much as the first choice.
And about 90 perent of votes cast will be used to elect someone preferred by the voter, although in perhaps a third of cases it will not be the voter's first choice.
And among the ten councillors will be found representatives of the two largest groups, and also at least one seat for any group that can accumulate just a bit more than nine percent of the votes. Likely the vote transfers will aggregate the votes of less-popular voting block behind just one candidate, and that candidate will be the most-popular of the group of candidates preferred by the nine-percent group.
Any group that contains a bit more than 1/11th of the votes (about nine percent) - and where voters mark their top preferences for a certain group of candidates - will see a candidate in that group elected. It might take many vote transfers but if the voting block has more than a quota and preferences are marked just for candidates of that block, those votes must produce a representative. There is just no way around it.
Each vote can in the end be used just to elect one candidate so you would have one person, one vote in a way that the Block Voting system never gave the people.
STV does not use parties in the vote count, so a non-partisan election is no barrier to using STV.
Are STV's vote-counting procedure and vote transfers difficult?
There is a step by step oligorithm that makes the vote count simple.
Winnipeg used STV to elect ten MLAs in one contest for many years, long before computers. The process is shown in Wiki "1920 Manitoba general election" for example.
little complex math is used, only when surplus votes of winners are transferred, so at the most there will be nine times when reductionist math will be used to determine how many votes are transferred to which other candidates.
Generally transfers are done by merely looking at the vote to be transferrerd and seeing what is the next usable marked preference, if any, and moving the vote to that pile, and then producing a new vote tally for the candidate when the transfer is done.
Under STV Droop quota is the usual quota used to determine winners. it is possible to be elected with less at the end but for most of the vote count/seat allocation process, Droop quota is the threshold.
The math used to determine Droop quota is votes/seats +1, plus 1.
so in an election where 1200 votes are cast, Droop quota would be 109 votes. Any candidate who receives at least that many votes will be declared elected.
If there are basically two large voting blocks, plus other voters --
the largest group likely might take four or five seats,
the second-largest group might take four or three,
leaving one to three seats to smaller groups.
In some cases, voters in small groups may not elect one of their own candidates but instead have their votes transferred to a candidate of a larger group, thus influencing the flavour of the large group's representation.
Where four different groups elect one or more members, four different perspectives would be represented, not counting the variety of sentiment found in each large group.
Likely 8/10ths or 9/10ths of the voters would have their votes actually used to elect someone.
When ten Winnipeg MLAs were elected in 1920, 89 percent of the votes cast were actually used to elect someone. Such high rate of effective votes would encourage many voters who now stay at home to get out and vote knowning that the chances were very good that their vote, if made, would be used to actually elect someone.
With the broad range of member elected in a ten-seat contest, very many voters would find someone among the ten elected members that would be a voice for their opinion on an issue.
And even if ten or 20 percent of voters marked preferences for only candidates who are not elected and do not have their vote used to actually elect anyone, they are likely to find someone who is close to their sentiment among those who were elected, because the winners would hold widely diverging opinion.
The winners would not just be of one group as might historically have been the case under Block Voting or first past the post.
STV means ranked ballots
Likely voters could mark only as many preferences as they desire, and not be required to mark a set number. ("optional-preferential voting")
Broad rules could be used to determine valid ballots.
So under STV, a vote marked with just one vote, no more work than required under first past the post, would be accepted. Under STV, about half the ballots marked with just one preference would be used to elect that preferred person; the other half of the votes were placed on candidates who were not elected and they were wasted This is better odds than Block Voting, perhaps where as little as 1/3rd of the votes might be used to fill all the seats.
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Closed-door deals flourish where there is not balance in the government chamber. Citizenry becomes dispirited and apathetic when they see their vote disregarded again and again.
STV produces government chambers that are micro-copies of the votes cast. This fairness produces wider accountability and openness, and allows many voices to be heard and considered, and produces governments that govern to the benefit of more of the voters.
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I can be contacted at montotom@yahoo.ca for more information.
My small book When Canada had Proportional Represention. STV in Western Canada 1917-1971, ($6) is available at Alhambra Books, Edmonton, giving the history of STV usage in Canada, and insight into how STV works.
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For more detailed info on use of and benefits of STV,
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