In last round of Ontario city elections, London set a record by using Alternative Voting. This was the first time that electoral system had been used in Canada since its use in the 1971 Calgary city election.
Alternative Voting uses preferential ballots, where voters can rank candidates.
But a London voter was set a limit - he or she could mark first preference and only two back-up preferences.
This limit would not have been bad if there had been only four candidates. But the election of London's mayor saw an unusually large number of candidates - 14. By the time Holden was elected on the 13th Count, all but two candidates had been eliminated. Only 13,000 votes separated him from the other surviving candidate.
By that point 21,000 votes had been exhausted. The large number of exhausted votes was equal to a quarter of the total votes. This large number was probably largely due to votes being marked with the utmost three choices but, having to be transferred more than two times, had run out of marked back-up preferences. (It is possible some were marked with only one preference as could happen even with no limit on ranking.) Unable to be transferred when transfer was necessary, they were declared exhausted and put aside.
This amounted to a large number of wasted votes and could have had an effect on the result of the election itself. If so many votes had not been wasted, would a different person have been elected?
This was warned against back in 1914.
A collection of essays on preferential voting stated:
"... the purpose of preferential voting is to offer the easiest and most nearly certain means for the majority sentiment to crystallize behind some one of a large number of nominees for an office. It is obvious that voters must be permitted to vote - in one order or another - for all the candidates they wish to support. Only a small minority of the cities that have adopted Alternative Voting have fallen into the seductive, dangerous and wholly needless error of limiting the number of choices, and it is hoped that this erroneous practice will not spread." (University of Oklahoma Quarterly Bulletin, Sept. 1914, available online from U.S Library of Congress)
Apparently, here is a case of those who don't know their history being forced to repeat it. To be fair, I did not know this age-old wisdom until today myself. We can take solace in seeing that London did not go through the disaster of adopting the Bucklin scheme of counting preferential ballots at first as many of those cities did a hundred years ago.
Alternative Voting and its sister system, Single Transferable Voting, are both time-proven applications of preferential voting, one in single-member elections and the other in multi-member elections. They operate the best when voters are permitted full liberty, to mark as many choices or as few as they desire.
The two systems are a great advance on FPTP. We don't need any better.
Thanks for reading.
(See my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.)
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More info on London's AV election
The recent issue of Alberta Views (October 2021) has published cribbed info from the Unlock Democracy Canada website on the London Ontario city election that used Alternative Voting (IRV).
points out that Ontario legislation passed in 2016 allows Ontario cities to adopt ranked ballots either in AV or PR-STV version. (since then, Ford has cancelled this.)
The article goes on to say how London was the first city brave enough to adopt ranked ballots. But no admission is made that the city adopted AV and that AV is only majoritarian where, at least for aldermanic elections, voters are divided and split by the boundaries of 14 different wards. It is not proportional. In fact, there is no mention of PR thereafter
At the end it says 68 percent of participating voters marked back-up preferences and two thirds of them marked three.
That is great although three, the maximum allowed, was not enough and many votes had to be declared exhausted before the transfers were finished. (No limit on the number of back-up preferences that could be marked should be imposed on voters! Let us mark!, should be our battle cry.)
But more importantly than how many voters marked all three preferences we should ask how many votes - whether through first preference or back-up preferences - actually elected someone? In many wards it was less than a majority of votes cast - this was due to so many votes being declared exhausted.
Holder, the winning mayoral candidate, was elected in the end with 44,373 votes when 48,320 was a majority of valid votes that were cast. Holder had lead of only 13,000 votes, and 20,000 votes had been declared exhausted so it is not clear he was the choice of most voters. In Ward 5, Cassidy won with 3922 votes, 44 percent of votes cast. In Ward 8, Lehman won with 3058 votes, 39 percent of votes cast. In Ward 12, Peloza won with 3139 votes, 48 percent of votes cast. Ward 13, Kayabaga won with 2325 votes, 41 percent of votes cast. Ward 14, Hillier won with 2522 votes, 48 percent of votes cast.
As well, the IRV used in London 2018 election produced no different representation than FPTP would have. The leader in the first count won in the end in every ward. Under any election where votes cast single votes and multiple members are elected, there is diversity among those elected. No one group can take all the seats. If London had adopted ranked ballots and multiple-member districts or at-large, diversity would have been produced, not just a partially-failed attempt at majority rule. Kayabaga, whose election is taken by many as the benchmark of diversity produced by ranked ballots., would have been even more assured of election under PR. Under PR-STV, she would have been elected by a broader base than just 41 percent of the voters in one ward. Next year she may decide to run again. If she does but is only up against one candidate she may not be re-elected. But under a multi-member PR system, that kind of democratic diversity would be more certain. That two-thirds of 68 percent of the London voters marked three preferences is something. But marking preferences is not what gives you PR or fair representation or a high proportion of votes being used to elect someone. When each voter can cast just one vote and multiple members are elected, there is diversity in the front runners in the first count. If the election ends there, with just the front runner being used to fill the seats, it would be more balanced and diverse and proportional than FPTP or AV. In 1930 and 1944, Calgary was using STV to elect its MLAs. (It was using STV in city elections too but that is another story). In those two elections the front runners in the first count - before any votes were transferred - were all elected in the end, after all the vote transfers were done. Was it any less proportional because back-up preferences made no difference? Candidates of three different parties were elected each time - seems pretty proportional. Single Non-transferable Voting would have produced exactly the same result. FPTP or AV would almost certainly not have. The marking of back-up preferences is nice because it shows voters are buying into reform and playing the game. But if they are not allowed to mark enough it is so much wasted effort. And sometimes the back-up preferences are not, in fact, used. Any votes bearing first preferences cast for those who won in the end were never transferred - the candidate was never eliminated, none of the back-up preferences on his first-count votes were used. Back-up preferences are not enough to secure just (righteous) representation. Single voting and multiple members in a district or in at-large elections with no districts at all, even with no back-up preferences used, provides proportionality, whether through STV or MMP or SNTV. Single-winner elections never can produce proportionality - or when they do, it is a strange kind of proportionality where the success of voters of type A in one ward are balanced by the success of voters of type B in a different ward, while the unsuccessful voters in each ward - perhaps a majority in each - have no representation at all. The story of electoral reform in London does not need to end with many of its voters marking three preferences in 2018. Let's hope that was just the beginning.
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