(alternative title: Does Your Ward Councillor Work For You?)
Edmonton elects its councillors in wards so we say there is local representation on city council. But what is the role of the local councillor?
Does the ward councillor have any power in a city council where all the other councillors are elected to represent other wards?
The mayor is elected by voters across the city, so he is, at least, theoretically responsible for the city as a whole. But he is only one vote on council.
What can a voter do if these city officials do not represent him?
These and other questions seem like merely theoretical matters until a resident of the city is faced with a critical change in his or her neighbourhood.
Say a safe-injection site is planned for your street. Local residents and business people right on that block are worried about a dramatic and downward change in the atmosphere on the block and on local property values. Although admitting that safe-injection sites are beneficial in preventing overdoses, many object to putting such a facility on the block where they work or live.
How does the local councillor stand on the issue? As a member of the city council overseeing the needs of the city, he may support the project. But as a ward representative, he is expected to echo the views of voters in his ward who fear possible impacts on their business or personal safety.
Even if he objects, his objections may be disregarded. He is just a minority on the council, and the other councillors are not at all accountable to voters outside their own wards.
Say the local councillor does not make a stand, refusing to be drawn into what he may see as a no-win situation. Upset voters can try to punish him by not voting for him next time.
Would that have an effect? Seems not, if we look at the last city election. Most of the councillors were elected with a small fraction of votes cast in their ward. One was elected with just 5000 votes, which seems a lot until you learn that 85,000 people live in her ward. If a councillor was elected with only 25 percent of the vote, he or she is not likely to be worried about a small group of upset voters when he or she goes for re-election.
Furthermore, our voting system is so loose and easy that a councillor getting the same number of votes may not be re-elected. And if he gets fewer votes, he may still be elected.
In 2021 we did not elect to council the 12 candidates who were the most popular across the city. For instance, Anne Stevenson received 4034 votes and was elected. Bev Esslinger received 4400 votes but was not elected. They were not actually in competition with each other. The city is divided into 12 wards, and they ran in different wards. Perhaps Bev might have been elected if she had run in Anne’s ward, we can’t know. But still the fact is Bev was more popular and was not elected.
But let’s say we divide the city into only two halves, each half electing six councillors. And we use a fair voting system where each voter casts just one vote. Wasted votes could be avoided by using transferable votes, as used in elections in Ireland and in cities in Scotland. Every substantial group in each half of the city would have representation. A candidate getting a set number of votes would be certain of election. A fair voting system electing multiple representatives rewards good representation in a way that no First Past The Post system can. Both Bev and Anne could be elected.
Getting back to the safe-injection site issue, if a district had several councillors, if a local councillor stood aside and did not stand up for his constituents, another councillor representing the same district may take the matter up. He or she may say there is a real need but the proposed location is not the way to go.
But now each ward has just one local representative. If he does not do anything, no one is on city council with specific responsibility to represent the views of ward residents.
The final decision will be decided by politics, a weighing of pros and cons, of the greatest good to the greatest number.
But is our city council the best instrument to determine that outcome?
The successful candidates received only 99,000 votes of the 227,000 votes cast. More votes were cast for unsuccessful candidates than for the people who were elected.
It could be that if votes could have been transferred, the same winners might have been elected. But such was not proven. With single-member wards and First Past The Post voting, we see nine of the city's 12 councillors were elected with less than half the votes in their wards.
Having several councillors representing a district, if accompanied by fair voting, would mean about 80 percent of the votes would be used to actually elect someone.
Why stop at 6-seat wards? Why not elect our councillors at-large in one city-wide district?
Almost every city in Alberta elects their councillors without the use of wards dividing the city. Only Edmonton and Calgary use wards. Whether elected in single-member wards or at-large, councillors are able to vote on issues concerning all parts of the city.
So perhaps councillors should be elected at large in one city-wide district. This would theoretically give councillors regard only for overall city needs. But re-election would depend on support from individual voters so they would work to serve their interests. That is really all we can ask for.
Currently when a councillor is elected with the votes from as few as six percent of the residents of the ward (5000 votes in a 85,000-resident ward), there is little accountability. Would at-large elections be any worse?
Do our ward councillors give us special local representation? It seems not.
When councillors debated continued city support for Scona Pool, the local councillor was not even on the committee (from what I understand). No fault of his - he obviously cannot be everywhere -- he is only one person. But where was local input? Not present.
If councillors were elected at-large and if the voting system was set up to be fair, one-twelfth of the vote – say 19,000 votes – would be enough to be elected. If half-city districts were used, one-sixth or so of the votes cast in half of the city would be enough to be elected, still 19,000 votes. Every councillor would have his or her 19,000 supporters and would work to reflect the views of that group. It is not an impossible task to rouse up 19,000 votes in just a part of the city. So campaigns would be no more expensive than at present.
What happens in city hall would still be a fight for priorities, a weighing of different claims. But under fair voting, in multi-member wards or at-large, the best people as measured by votes cast would be elected.
After the election, a resident would be able to rely on several elected councillors to represent his or her views, not just one who may or may not be up to the job.
Flexibility, dependability, fairness - things that our present voting system does not give us - could be secured through fair voting in half-city districts or at-large elections.
Would it make a difference in how Edmonton city councillors perform their duties? I believe it would.
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(originally published in Millwoods Mosaic Feb. 2023)
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