Leading Canadian proportionalist Robert Tyson emphasized multi-member districts as being basic to PR and proper democracy (MMDs)
- Tom Monto
- Jun 1
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 2
Robert Tyson helped publicize Proportional Representation around the turn of the last century.
Articles he wrote in the early years of the 20th Century stressed the end for multi-member districts.
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1901
Proportional Voting in Municipal Elections
(written by "R.T.", but no doubt it was written by Robert Tyson)
Tyson mentions move from SMDs to MMDs as good thing:
"That the people of Ontario are beginning to realize the truth [that a good or bad arrangement of district, of marking ballots, or counting votes determines the character of the government] is shown by the popularity of recent legislation looking towards the abolition of municipal wards. The small electoral districts known as "wards" are emphatically a bad arrangement. They are doomed, and thus one great step is being taken towards good municipal government.
What is the next step?
Obviously a change in the present voting system...."
Tyson went on to castigate Block Voting, and point to the efficiency of STV which he called the Hare -Spence system, after Thomas Hare and Catherine Helen Spence.
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"Needed Political Reforms -- Proportional Representation, or Effective Voting"
(Arena Magazine vol. 28 July to December 1902)
...
Objects of PR: To destroy the political monopoly exercised by the party machine" with accompaniments of disenfranchisement, mis-representation, non-representation, plutocratic rule, gerrymandering, bribery, lying, corruption, crookedness, party bitterness and kindred political evils.
To substitute therefor a just and proportional representation of all the electors, thus making practically every vote effective, giving in the legislatures a true reflection of public opinion, and permitting the election of the best men.
Means: The use of a reasonable and scientific system of voting, instead of the present stupid, unfair, and inefficient procedure.
Methods: There are several systems by which the principle of PR may be given effect to. Large electoral districts, each electing several members, are a necessary feature. The "quota" plan is usually employed. It means that a quota of the voters elects one representative. To arrive at the quota, the number of valid votes cast is divided by the number of seats to be filled [This Hare quota is not used in the 21st Century; the Droop quota is now used.]
For instance, in a seven-member district any one-seventh of the voters could elect one representative, and the other six-sevenths could not interfere with their choice.
The three principal systems of PR are the Free List, as used in Switzerland and Belgium; the Hare system [STV], as used in Tasmania; and the Gove system, as advocated in Massachusetts.[but not used anywhere].
...
The urgent need for a change in electoral methods will live at once evident by taking almost any State of the Union as an example and examining the method of electing members to Congress and or a State <legislature. The whole State is cut up into little arbitrary districts, and in each of these districts the voters elect one member. A voter in one district cannot of course vote for a candidate who is running in any other district. On each of these little districts, there are say from six to eight political ideas that desire expression and representation, as for instance the Republican idea, the Democrat idea, the Expansionist and anti-Expansionist ideas, the anti-Trust idea, the Direct Legislation idea, the Populist, Labor, Prohibition, Socialist, Women Suffrage , and Single Tax ideas.
Some of these may not be numerically strong enough to entitle them to representation.
Others certainly are.
Yet all these varying and often conflicting ideas have either to find expression and representation in the one solitary member sent up from the district, or not to be represented at all. Is not absurdity stamped plainly on the face of such a system?
Of course the result is practically that only one, or possibly two, of the leading ideas are represented, and the votes who hold all the other ideas are all disenfranchised and unrepresented... (p. 610-611)
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When discussing districts, Robert Tyson used the exact same words in his entry in Pomeroy's major article "By the People" published in 1902 in the Direct Legislation Record (p. 106)
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By the time Tyson wrote the "appendix" in Alfred Cridge's booklet PR in Feb. 1903, he had dropped his emphasis on MMDs and barely mentioned them,
but did stress "single voting", where the voter had one vote In an MMD, and pointed out how the vote transfers actually were just a minor feature - all or most of the candidates leading in the first count would go on to be elected in the end.
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