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Tom Monto

Introduction to PR and STV written by Tom Monto, Catherine Helen Spence

Updated: Dec 12, 2023

Tom Monto:

Under STV, each voter casts just one vote but can mark back-up preferences for use in case their first preference cannot be elected or in case their vote is used to elect someone with a surplus of votes.


Having back-up preferences means the voter has no excuse to engage in strategic voting.


Having MMDs means there is locally-based representation. STV often uses city-wide districts. These are just as local as the local hockey team or radio station or the city mayor.


A pamphlet put out by PR League around 1920 states:

As with nearly every other system of PR, the basis of the STV system is the election of the body not from single-member districts but as at-large (city-wide) - as in Ashtabula, Boulder and Kalamazoo - or by districts large enough to have several members each, preferably between five and fifteen - as in Malta and Ireland.


In Canada, 20 cities once used STV to elect their city councils, and the MLAs of Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg were elected by STV as well, from the 1920s to 1950s.

Five to ten seats were filled at one time. 80 percent or more of votes cast were used to actually elect someone.


Why use ranked votes, ballots that bear first preferences and back-up preferences?


The ranked ballot paper puts the voter in the position to transfer his vote in every contingency.


The Single Transferable Vote actually gives a certainty of effective representation to every citizen.


Under STV a high proportion of votes are used to elect someone, not the case under FPTP.


With so many votes used effectively, the final result is guaranteed to reflect the views of voters.


Even if the voter does not elect his or her first choice, the vote is used to elect someone that the voter prefers over others.


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Catherine Helen Spence, one of Australia's leading proportionalists, around 1890:

The only thing that can be said for the present system [First Past The Post] is that it represents localities.


But in point of fact, all those who did not vote for the successful man are unrepresented. Often these are the more numerous. Plurality is not majority, while those who voted because he was the only man brought forward by the party, while neither liking nor trusting him, are misrepresented.


By a simple alteration in the method of taking votes, and by the enlargement of constituencies so as to allow of quota representation for six, seven, or better still, for ten-seat districts, dividing the number of votes polled by the number of representatives required, and making that number sufficient for the election of a candidate, each elector in the country may aid in the return of one man of whom he approves.


Such a result is made absolutely secure by means of the single transferable vote.


The state would gain by the raised character of the legislature and of the executive; the candidates would gain by their emancipation from party trammels and parish politics; and above all the elector would gain his full rights as a citizen of a free country.

...

Nothing will come right unless those who feel that they have the truth, speak and work and strain. On them depends the destinies of the world. In the substitution of the co-operative spirit for the competitive in politics, I believe we may find deliverance from many evils that are eating into the heart of humanity. Therefore I call upon all who see this truth to aid in the spread of it, and not to keep it as a private opinion. Unless our disciples become apostles, our progress will continue to be slow.


It is easier for a good man to gain a quota in a large district than a plurality in a small one, and he is most likely to get it by the best means; by courage and sincerity, by character and abilities. It is easier for a bad man to get a plurality in a small district than a quota in a large one; and he may gain it by the worst means; by trimming and truckling to what he fancies is the popular feeling; by misrepresenting the views and the motives of his opponents; by pandering to local and class interests; by encouraging too many candidates to start, so that votes may be lost, if not by bribery outright.


I was asked if I really believed that Effective Voting would put a stop to bribery. I replied that as each vote must count, and no vote extinguishes any other, every vote must be bought, and that would be too expensive.


My questioner said that supposing the quota for the district was one thousand, a rich man who wanted very much to get into Parliament would be willing to give a thousand pounds for them. I replied that he might indeed be willing, but where in any district of South Australia, could he find a thousand men willing to sell their birth-right for such a poor mess of pottage?


There are a few weaklings who may be cajoled, and a few crawlers who may be bought, by means of whom the scale may be turned in a uni-nominal constituency, but they are an insignificant portion of any quota.


(From Spence's contribution to Sandford Fleming's 1892 book The Rectification of Parliament)

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