In 1935, the two main bodies of the newly-formed Alberta Social Credit party called for wide application of the Single Transferable Voting system. Since 1924, STV had been in use in Alberta to elect MLAs just in Edmonton and Calgary (and, in one election, in Medicine Hat). The other parts of the province elected their MLAs in single-member districts through a different system - Alternative Voting, which like STV used ranked ballots.
Alberta's Social Credit party was created in 1935 (after two years of active grassroots organizing, politicking and propagandizing by William Aberhart and many others). This party would be elected in 1935, to become the first Social Credit government in the world.
Its election could in no way be blamed on STV as it was not like it used STV to gain a small foothold in the Legislature then gradually through increased exposure and media coverage got its message out and then came into power.
NO - this was the first election it ran in.
It went from zero seats to majority government in just one day.
Aberhart is said to have endorsed the STV/AV electoral system that the UFA government had brought in. Certainly, while he was premier, Alberta did not change back to FPTP.
In fact a few months before the 1935 election, the southern Alberta convention of his party passed a resolution in favour of extending the STV system. This plan would have seen all of Alberta put into multiple-member districts, nine in number, each electing five members. (The same District Magnitude is used in STV elections in Northern Ireland and the Australian Capital Territory today.)
The 45 seats meant a reduction in the number of MLAs in the province.
The northern Alberta SC convention passed most of the resolutions passed by the southern convention, including its call for STV right across the province. It did not endorse the other convention's call for the large reduction in the number of MLAs. Some delegates said that a move to fewer representatives would be a step back to the times when there was only one leader - a monarch. (EB, April 27, 1935)
And Aberhart never did change Alberta's system of two STV islands – Edmonton and Calgary – in the midst of single-member districts.
The five-member districts were handy in that there would have been only about 20 candidates on the ballot, not too many to cause voters to feel daunted by the size and complexity.
At the same time, five is good number to allow mixed representation. Likely candidates of two or three parties would be elected in each district.
The plan for 45 MLAs is not known but if we were imagine one it would have been based on the province's 17 federal ridings.
Looking at the federal ridings that this new system is based on, the multi-member provincial districts would not have been too large. If two or three MPs could represent that large an area, surely it would have been possible for five MLAs to represent the same area.
The nine five-member districts that could have been:
New Edmonton district 5 members 2 Edmonton ridings 6 old MLAs
New Calgary district 5 members 2 Calgary ridings 6 old MLAs
New Southeast Alberta 5 members Medicine Hat, Lethbridge ridings
New Southwest Alberta 5 members Macleod, Jasper ridings
New South-central Alberta (Calgary to Red Deer) 5 members Bow River, Acadia ridings
New Central Alberta 5 members Wetaskiwin, Red Deer ridings
New North-central Alberta (Red Deer to Edmonton) 5 members Camrose, Battle River ridings
New East-central Alberta 5 members Vegreville riding
New Northern Alberta 5 members Athabasca, Peace River ridings
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Say we look at the imaginary new South-central Alberta district.
The provincial constituencies in this area and the percentage that voted Social Credit were
Cochrane 53 p.c. SC
Gleichen 51 p.c. SC
Didsbury 63 p.c. SC
Olds 64 p.c. SC
Innisfail 67 p.c. SC
Red Deer 59 p.c. SC
SC took majority of votes in each district (and all the seats) but there were many non-SC voters.
The UFA was the sitting government when the 1935 election was called.
It ran candidates in each of these districts (except Red Deer) and received many votes but no seats.
The Liberal party ran candidates in each district and in several came in second.
Perhaps with the multi-member districts the Liberals or the UFA would have taken a seat or two.
Total votes in the districts:
Cochrane 3522
Gleichen 4137
Didsbury 4365
Olds 5492
Innisfail 4207
Red Deer 6037
total votes 27760
with five members, quota would be 17 p.c. or 4627 votes.
UFA votes Liberal votes
Cochrane 591 UFA votes 628
Gleichen 895 UFA votes 569
Disbury 610 UFA votes 607
Olds 694 UFA votes 955
Innisfail 386 UFA votes 583
Red Deer zero UFA votes 788
3176 UFA votes 4130 Liberal votes
So no non-SC party deserved a seat by itself, but perhaps vote transfers would have given a single non-SC candidate quota and a seat. So instead of the SC sweep of all the seats in this area in this election, there would have been some "minority" representation.
The SC took no more than two-thirds of the vote in any district and in one district just slightly more than half the votes. Proportionally speaking, it did not deserve the clean sweep that Alternative Voting gave it.
The varying size of districts apparently gave the Social Credit candidates a benefit. This type of bonus would be impossible or repressed under STV multi-member districts. (The SC party was not responsible for the unfair almost-gerrymandering - the sitting UFA government must have let it happen.)
Red Deer had twice the votes of Cochrane in total.
In Cochrane the SC candidate won the seat with only 1880 votes.
The Liberal candidates across South-central Alberta received twice the votes of the successful SC candidate in Cochrane but took no seats.
The Liberal in Olds alone had half the votes of the SC victor in Cochrane.
Alternative Voting although never a proportional system has more prestige if it is used where districts are fairly consistent in size. Otherwise unfair results like these are produced.
Multi-member districts would prevent the sort of unfairness caused by a multitude of small single-member districts. Thus I feel it is too bad that Alberta did not adopt the five-member multi-member districts the SC conventions endorsed.
Representation produced by such a wide application of STV would have been more balanced in the legislature and thus more representative of the wishes of the voters.
Thanks for reading.
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