Manitoba's provincial election of June 1920 was unusual in at least three respects. Among those elected to seats in the provincial Legislature were three candidates who were being housed in prison — former leaders of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. It saw the first woman, Liberal Edith Rogers, elected to the Manitoba Legislature.
And it was the first time a Proportional Representation voting system was used at the provincial level in Canada.
Single Transferable Voting (STV) was used in Manitoba for the election of Winnipeg MLAs starting in 1920. Unlike today, the entire city of Winnipeg was a single district with ten representatives in the Legislature. Previously, it had had six, two MLAs elected in each of three districts. There had been no proportionality because in each district each voter had been able to cast up to two votes, allowing the largest group to claim both seats in a district.
This however was not the first time STV was used in Canada. Calgary had been using it for city elections since 1917, and by 1920 several cities in BC had already adopted it for their city elections. Political scientists argue about the most democratic system for electing our government representatives. STV had proven itself in many cities in the U.S. and in high-level elections in Ireland, a place that was like Manitoba (at the time still hot under the collar from the 1919 General Strike) where political divisiveness was rife.
STV is based on multi-member districts and voters casting only one vote but providing back-up preferences to provide fairness and reduce waste.
In the 1920 election, there were a staggering 41 candidates listed on each ballot. Two political parties—Liberals (the incumbents) and Conservatives — each fielded ten candidates. Five other parties ran partial slates. Eight candidates ran as independents.
Election ballots listed each of the candidates in alphabetical order. Voters wrote a number 1 beside their first choice, 2 beside their second choice, and so on, until they had ranked their preference for as many candidates as they wanted to.
In the first round of counting of the votes cast in an STV election, the “1” votes for each candidate are counted. These totals are compared to a threshold (total votes cast divided by one more than the number of candidates, plus one), the minimum required to be assured of winning a seat. Any candidate who has at least that number of votes is declared elected. All votes above this threshold are surplus because they are not needed to elect that candidate. Instead of being wasted as they are under FPTP, under STV the surplus votes are transferred to other candidates based on the back-up preferences marked by the voter.
When all surplus votes have been transferred and if there are still open seats remaining, the least-popular candidate is eliminated and his or her votes transferred based on the next back-up preference marked on each ballot, to a candidate not yet elected or eliminated.
These elections and eliminations gradually reduce the number of candidates in the field. If the he field of candidates is thinned to the number of remaining open seats, those remaining are declared elected even if they do not have quota.
47,427 votes were cast in Winnipeg in 1920.
Thus the threshold was calculated to be 4,312 votes.
Two candidates were elected in the first round of counting. A Dominion Labour Party candidate, former General Strike leader Fred Dixon, was elected by a landslide, with 11,586 votes. Liberal candidate Thomas Johnson won a seat with 4,386 votes, barely above the threshold.
35 more counts were held before the last seats were filled. This seems like a lot of work but 11 counts entailed the transfer of only a couple hundred votes.
Each voter could cast only one vote so no single party could push all its candidates to the top of the vote count to take all the seats. Four parties were represented in the ten leading candidates in the first count. This group of leading candidates was further refined through vote transfers of surplus votes and votes that had been lodged with eliminated candidates.
In the end, STV produced a mixed lot of representatives that reflected the varied sentiment of city voters. Winnipeg's large number of seats meant any voting block of about 10 percent of the voters could elect an MLA. Winnipeg MLAs included four Liberals and two Conservatives. As well, four leftists (three of whom were in prison for their General Strike activities, but were soon to be released) were elected: two Dominion Labour Party, one Socialist Party of Canada and one Social Democratic Party.
Representatives of five parties were thus elected.
Before the election, officials had worried that voter confusion, especially among newly-enfranchised women and non-English-speakers, would confound the election results. In the end, however, it was generally conceded that the 1920 election proceeded without a hitch.
As of the 1927 general election, a “single transferable vote” system, similar to the one in Winnipeg, was used in the districts outside Manitoba. There a single-winner version of STV - Alternative Voting (or Instant-Runoff Voting) - ensured that to be elected, a candidate had to have the support of a majority of voters in each district, the majority made up of first-preference votes by themselves or a mixture of first preferences and votes transferred from other candidates who were eliminated. This provided fairer results than under FPTP - there was no way that the member would be elected with just a minority of votes in play as often is done due to vote splitting under FPTP. Under FPTP, it often happens that a candidate is elected with only a minority of the votes in the district, leaving a majority of the district voters without representation.
In 1949, Winnipeg switched from electing ten MLAs overall to having four districts, each electing four MLAs, still using STV. This shortened the list of candidates on the ballots.
Manitoba's experience with STV and AV at the provincial level ended in 1957.
The provincial election of 1958 was the first one since 1915 where Winnipeg voters returned to the old system of marking a single preferred candidate with an X. Twenty-seven of the 57 successful candidates were elected with only a minority of the votes in the district - a thing that just would not have happened under the AV system in place hitherto.
The Conservatives won more seats than its due share but not enough to be more than a minority government, without control of a majority of seats in the legislature. And the government fell within a year.
Thus, in 1958 FPTP was not any more successful at producing majority government than PR/IRV had been.
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also see another blog on Manitoba's STV:
Manitoba's provincial STV elections in detail (a work in progress)
1920-1955 Winnipeg was a city-wide 10-member district.
Under STV, each time the city-district produced mixed representation - no one party ever took a sweep of a district's seats (which often happens under FPTP or Block Voting even if a party never takes all the votes in a city.
1920 10 seats
members of 5 parties elected -- Liberal 4, DLP 2, Conservative 2, SDP 1, SPC 1
1922
members of 6 parties elected -- Liberal 2, Conservative 2, ILP 3, Moderation League 1, Independent Worker 1, Progressive Party 1
1927
members of 4 parties elected -- 3 Conservatives, 3 ILP, 2 Progressive Party, 2 Liberal
Transfers of surplus votes belonging to elected Conservatives Haig and Evans went in large numbers to Tobias, helping him take a seat although he was not in top ten in the first count.
Communist candidate Penner's vote tally was not large enough for him to win a seat and he received few vote transfers, but many of his votes were transferred to help elect Ivens, the last ILP member to be elected.
The Independent-Moderationist candidate Downes received some vote transfers from supporters of candidates running under other labels, but not enough to maintain a lead over party candidates (Rogers and Ivens) who although initially lower ranking compared to Downes, received many vote transfers from elected or eliminated candidates of the same party.
In each party the most popular candidates maintained their position visa vis other candidates of the same party all the way through. The question was how many quota each party had at the start (taking all the party candidates together) and how many they would pick up from cross-party transfers - this set up how many seats each party would take. The seats were filled by the candidates in popularity order set by the voters. Party lists, if they had been used as in Party-list proportional representation, might have dictated that different persons would have filled the seats that were indirectly allocated to each party than were the choice of voters in this election.
1932
members of 3 parties elected
1936
members of 5 parties elected
1941
members of 2 parties elected
1945
members of 4 parties elected
1949 Winnipeg divided into multi-member districts each electing four. STV still used
Even with smaller District Magnitude, each district each time produced mixed representation - no one party ever took a sweep of a district's seats.
1949
Centre members of 2 parties elected
North members of 2 parties elected
South members of 3 parties elected
1953
Centre members of 4 parties elected, including Independent MLA Juba (later mayor of Winnipeg)
North members of 3 parties elected
South members of 3 parties elected
1955 Winnipeg divided into single-member districts, members elected through FPTP.
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