Multi-member districts are critical to Proportional Representation (PR).
Multi-member districts or at-large elections where jurisdiction is small enough (such as city elections), are integral to PR - you cannot have proportionality without them, except in systems that use top-up seats allocated in separate multi-seat districts.
in Canada, the largest unit we could use would be province-wide districts - in provincial elections, and due to the constitution in federal elections as well.
The need for local representation means that city-wide districts were used in most of the PR elections in Canada's past - in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg in provincial elections and in city elections in those cities and other cities as well. (MM districts covering only parts of a city were used at some times as well in city elections.)
Winnipeg provincial had the highest District Magnitude of any place in Canada - ten MLAs being elected in each election held between 1920 and 1945. (Remember that under PR-STV each voter cast just one vote, of course - a preferential vote with each ballot bearing a marked first choice, and back-up preferences if and only if voter chose.)
Winnipeg city elections were held using three wards, each electing three councillors each time.
Compared to the results produced under 10-seat PR-STV in provincial elections in that same city, proportionality was lower in the city elections - with Ward 1 often electing just Business candidates and no Labour. Labour did take one or more seats in the other districts, even with only three seats being filled at one time.
Multi-seat districts are so important that even if STV is not used, even if Block voting is used, MM districts alone sometimes produced mixed representation - the hallmark of proportional representation.
Calgary in the 1921 provincial election used Block voting with each voter casting up to five votes, two Labour candidates, a Liberal and two Independents were elected, while Edmonton using the identical system elected only five members of Liberal party. (Perhaps Calgary's use of STV in city elections led to independent voting patterns in provincial elections when the recently-adopted five-seat district allowed them to do.)
MM districts are necessary for proportionality but is not always enough - a fair voting system and MM district together does guarantee proportional results - if the District Magnitude is enough.
Two seats does occasionally produce mixed rep - but at most two parties can be represented in the district,
Three-seat districts is iffy to produce mixed representation but more likely than two-seat districts, and even three parties get representation sometimes.
Four or more seats in a district ensures mixed representation with three parties often getting seat(s).
Winnipeg's ten-seat provincial district elected candidates of six parties at one time (1922) but other times only as few as two parties were elected. when some parties formed a "Coalition" and others formed an anti-Coalition force. (1941). That was WWII wartime and coalitions are big in wartime - recall Canada's WWI Union government.
As well, note that despite PR's reputation for securing representation for small parties, there is a system push toward only two parties even under PR (STV-PR anyway). in cases where there are just two parties, there is still fairness under PR (fairness that is not found in FPTP) -- each party takes only as many seats as its vote tallies deem.
In Malta, there is such confidence in PR-STV that each main party often runs more candidates than there are seats, knowing that their vote will stay solid and not wander off even in later preferences and so they offer the widest possible choice to the voters, and let the voters themselves determine which candidates will be elected as well having confidence that the PR-STV system will ensure that each party takes as many seats as it is due, without fear of vote spitting.
But in line with what Ed is saying in last email (see below), I think that that online explanation should emphasize that multiple (five) candidates are elected in each district -- that is the backbone of the system. That and single voting - each voter casting just one vote, not so much the preferential voting. If you look at actual results you see that in most cases the leaders in the first count were elected in the end. The vote transfers, made possible by preferential voting, have little effect. Where the transfers have effect, it was in choosing a more generally-popular candidate to be elected over a less-generally poplar candidate of the same party, but it never changed the number of seats each party took. Multi-member districts make proportionality possible while also preventing one-party sweeps of a city or region - if DM is four or more. Those one-party sweeps lead to regionalism, polarization and regional grievances and regional stereotyping. Having city-wide districts allows local representation just as local as "local " news on TV. Having districts that cover groupings of today's single-member districts allows proportionality as well as local representation.
it also allows: - use of natural boundaries - the city corporate boundaries for example - so prevents gerrymandering. - allows a know quantity of voters to work together in elections, - allowing various number of seats of four or more allows more organic organization of districts not just mas-produced cookie-cuter districts each of same size. The election in a city due four members that has four members elected in a single-district would be so much more fair than our present FPTP that its difference from the fine-grained results in a city due ten members that elects ten in a single district would be readily accepted. Local representation of the sort we have today would also be ensured under STV - if enough voters want that even at the expense of party allegiance. Say you have a district that was made by grouping of the old existing single-member districts. it would elect four members. if the voters in slightly more than a fifth of that city (an area even smaller than one of the previous four districts) mark their vote for the candidate in that section of the district, he or she will be elected - they are guaranteed to elect their local representative and there is nothing the other voters can do about it. And due to preferential voting, if more than one candidate runs to represent the sentiment of those voters in that small segment of the district, say a Liberal and Conservative, those voters are sure to elect one of those two candidates if as they give their first and their first back-up preference to those candidates and to only those candidates. There would be nothing the other voters could do about it - but the Liberals in the section would be sacrificing their party representation if their vote was used to elect a the local Conservative candidate while the Conservative voters would be sacrificing their party representation if their vote was used to elect the local Liberal candidate, but if local representation was more important to them than party rep., the voters could make it happen under STV. Under FPTP only one candidate of a party is offered and a voter voting for a party has no choice. With multi-member districts, voters have choice of party and also often of which of that party's candidates to vote for. Even before any voter transfers, about a third or a half of the votes are placed with candidates who will win in the end. Those votes are never transferred elsewhere (unless they compose part of the surplus a successful candidate has when declared elected.) Just electing multiple members in a district means that many more votes are used effectively to elect someone than is normally done under FPTP. With STV, the voter also has assurance that even if the first choice marked on the ballot is not a popular candidate, the back-up preferences he or she has marked will be used to ensure that the vote is used, if at all possible. The vote will be transferred according to the marked back-up preferences to find a home with a successful candidate if at all possible. The largest exception to this effective use of all votes are the votes that end up with the least popular remaining candidate at almost the end. When that candidate is eliminated, likely only as many candidates remain as the number of seats, and those remaining candidate at that point are all declared elected and no transfer is made of the votes that had belonged to the last eliminated candidate. a bit complicated but hopefully you get the picture. But even with this weakness, more votes are used effectively under STV than under FPTP --- far, far more. About 80 percent of votes cast in a PR-STV election are used effectively under STV consistently, compared to as few as 18 percent under FPTP (see the 2014 Toronto city election Ward 16 - 2014 Toronto municipal election - Wikipedia) PR, fair representation derived through scientific methods, depends on multi-member districts. it is impossible without it.
Thanks for reading.
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in the past each province used to have much fewer federal ridings, and back then, even with the primitive transportation and communication of the times, one member was able to represent that area. Multiple members with modern cellphones and automobiles should be able to represent the same size as one member used to in horse and buggy days.
while the number of rural MPs in Ontario and Quebec in there were in days of yore, each rural district in Alberta is half the size it was in 1905.
Quebec in 1891 had 65 MPs (most of which were rural),
now it has 78 (seats outside Montreal. Ottawa and Quebec City = 47)
so districts are 1.3 times the size they used to be.
Ontario in 1891 had 92 MPs (most of which were rural),
now it has 121 (79 seats outside Toronto)
so rural districts, on average, are just slightly larger than they once were
There has also not been much change in Manitoba and Saskactehwan. Manitoba in 1905 had 7 MPs, now it has 14 (6 rural districts outside of Winnipeg)
so rural districts, on average, are just slightly larger than they once were.
Saskatchewan in 1905 had 7 MPs,
now it has 14 (8 rural districts outside of Regina and Saskatoon)
so SK rural districts, on average, are just slightly smaller than they once were.
But in BC and Alberta there is opportunity to group rural ridings and still have districts smaller than they were in the old days.
In BC, each MP represents on average an area one-fifth in size what each BC MP once represented.
BC in 1891 had 6 MPs, now it has 42 (29 rural districts outside Vancouver and N. Lower Mainland) so rural districts, on average, are about one-fifth the size each rural disltrict used to be.
But in Alberta, each MP represents on average an area half what each Alberta MP once represented
Alberta in 1905 had 7 MPs,
now it has 34 (13 rural districts)
so on the average, each district today covers half the area covered by each Alberta riding in 1905.
Thus, two rural ridings in Alberta and about five in BC could be combined and still the area in each district would be less than a single MP represented in the old days.
The change in Alberta is even more clear:
Alberta in 1905 had 7 MPs,
now it has 34
13 rural districts
so on the average, each Alberta MP today covers half the area covered by each MP in 1905.
So it is easily possible to double the size of rural ridings and still have ridings smaller than they were in 1905, and each new district would have two MPs, not just the one that in 1905 represented that area.
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