U.S. reform governor later active in Edmonton politics - John W. Leedy

John W. Leedy, the least popular candidate in the 1926 Edmonton election, had had an amazing career.

A Populist Party governor of North Dakota (1896-1900), wealthy owner of Alaska gold-mine, mayor of Valdez, homesteader in Alberta, and, prior to 1926, unsuccessful Non-Partisan League candidate both provincially and federally.

In 1926 at age of 77 he ran for office in Edmonton on a bank-reform platform. He though was the least popular of the candidates, perhaps due to his advanced age or the fact that the Labour and UFA candidates received the bulk of the reform vote.

Being the least popular, he was the first to be eliminated as part of the Single Transferable Voting (STV) system used in Edmonton at that time.

Under FPTP, he would also not have been elected. But under FPTP his votes would have simply been thrown in wastebasket.

Under STV the votes were transferred to other candidates, as per back-up preferences marked by the voters on the ballots, and thus kept in play. A third of them went directly to candidates who would be elected. Many others probably also went indirectly to eventual winners as well.

For example, a good portion of Leedy's votes went to erratic labour/socialist/radical/Liberal/conservative Joe Clarke. When Clarke was eliminated, a good portion of his votes went to Farmilo. When Farmilo was eliminated, a good portion of his votes went to Lionel Gibbs who was elected. Thus it is possible that when Labour candidate Gibbs and Independent candidate S.A.G. Barnes were almost tied in vote totals, some of Leedy's votes helped elect Labour's Gibbs instead of Barnes.

Montopedia has a blog on John W. Leedy in its "Pantheon of Alberta reformers" series

Wikipedia has a page on John W. Leedy

Thanks for reading.

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