Canadian MLAs have not always been elected through First past the post (FPTP). For more than 30 years MLAs in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg were elected through a form of proportional representation.
This system is Singe Transferable Voting - a simple system that uses multiple-member districts and each voter only casting a single vote. These two elements alone guarantee that no single group takes all the seats in a city. (Under FPTP, all the federal seats in Calgary, Saskatoon, and Regina are currently held by Conservative MPs, despite a large portion of the vote in each city going to other parties.)
As well votes are transferable so as unpopular candidates are eliminated from the running his or her votes are not lost but transferred to others according to voters' stated preferences. This prevents much of the waste that occurs under FPTP.
The United Farmers of Alberta promised to adopt STV when they ran for election in 1921. Their stand was a reaction to the repeated pattern of a government winning a great predominance of seats although only getting a minority of the votes or only a slight majority and to the Liberal and Conservatives together taking all or all but a handful of sets, suppressing the 10 percent of the voters who voted Independent, labour, farmer or Socialist. After the UFA was elected in 1921, it fulfilled its promise in its first term in office, without holding a referendum as was its constitutional right. it adopted STV for the elections held in Edmonton and Calgary.
STV was adopted in Manitoba about the same time, also without a referendum. After the Winnipeg General strike citizens were strongly divided between two camps - a situation similar to today. There was apprehension that if either labour or capital won all the Winnipeg seats unrest would result. STV was seen as more fair and it delivered.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, STV was used to elect MLAs in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, each time in each place electing MLAs of three or more parties, representing all the large voting blocks in each place. It was cancelled in the two provinces in the 1950s to serve the selfish partisan desires of the governments in power.
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