1926 Alberta eleciton --Edmonton and Calgary election results proved STV's fairness

The 1926 Alberta election was the first time Single Transferable Voting, a form of proportional representation, was used in an Alberta election. It was the first of eight provincial elections to use STV.

The results of the election and many other aspects of the election varied greatly from the previous election. The differences show the greater fairness of STV compared to the Block Voting system that had been used in 1921 in Edmonton.

In 1926, like in 1921, five were elected.

In 1926, in 1921, all of Edmonton was one district.

But under 1921's Block Voting each voter had cast as many as five votes. The counting of votes under Block Voting had been a single-step affair that involved almost five votes per voter - and produced un-proportional results.

In 1926's STV each voter cast only one vote. Only one vote had to be counted per each voter. Each vote was transferable if it would otherwise be wasted. This made the count a multi-step affair, but produced proportional results.

In 1921 candidates of only one party - five Liberals - had been elected.

STV in 1926 produced a mixed representation - MLAs of four different parties were elected, reflecting the mixed sentiment of city voters.

1926 final result:

Lymburn (UFA)

Weaver Conservative

Gibbs Labour

Prevey Liberal

Duggan Conservative

1926 Edmonton election held using STV

Five to be elected

John Lymburn, Colonel Weaver, W.W. Prevey, Joe Clarke, J.C. Bowen were the five most popular candidates in First Count but only three of them were elected in the end.

Lionel Gibbs and D.M. Duggan accumulated many votes from vote transfers and overtook Clarke and Bowen by having more general acceptability, and took seats.

Votes cast: 18,721

(In 1921 75,000 votes were cast by 17,951 voters.)

Votes rejected: 567

Total valid votes: 18,154

Quota: 3026

(Any candidate with a vote tally equalling or surpassing quota is declared elected. Others may be declared elected if the field of candidates is thinned to a point where the number of candidates remaining is the same as the number of seats still open.)

1st Count results

Name Votes

Lymburn 3046

Weaver 2202

Prevey 1517

Clarke 1179

Bowen 1147

Barnes 1060

Farmilo 973

Folinsbee 881

Gibbs 879

Duggan 857

and other less-popular candidates

First Count

Lymburn was elected on the First Count. His miniscule surplus (20 votes) should have been distributed in the next count but was not transferred until the 12th Count.

2nd Count

1926 John W. Leedy* eliminated in 2nd Count.

No votes were transferred to UFA candidate Lymburn, because Lymburn was already declared elected in First Count.

The largest single group of votes, 30 of the 130 transferred, went to Liberal Prevey

23 of the 130 transferred went to Joe Clarke.

10 were exhausted - they obviously bore no back-up preferences or only one, one that was marked for Lymburn.

We can't know how many of these votes were "satisfied" by the election of Lymburn, marked as the second choice by the voter - and how many bore no back-up preference at all. They all were considered as wasted. Many assume that an exhausted vote - an un-usable one - is wasted but do not understand that it could instead be "satisfied."

3rd Count elimination of Lakeman.

His 661 votes were transferred.

No votes went to Liberal Bowen. This is one of few instances in Canada's STV history where a remaining candidate did not pick up any votes when transfer of more than 50 votes occurred. As votes have total liberty under STV to rank candidates as they desire, usually some votes in a transfer go to each other remaining candidate.

Prior to 15th Count

Lymburn and Colonel Weaver had surpassed quota and been declared elected.

Only five candidates still remain, after elections and eliminations.

Three seats remained open.

15th Count

Farmilo eliminated (By this point, Gibbs had more votes than Farmilo so was not eliminated.)

Each of four remaining candidates received some of his transfers.

Gibbs received many vote transfers (he and Farmilo were both Labour)

Gibbs surpassed quota and was declared elected.

Only three candidates still remain, after Farmilo's eliminations and Gibbs' election.

Two seats remained open.

16th Count

Gibbs 517 vote surplus transferred.

Each of three remaining candidates received some of his transfers

at end of 16th Count

vote totals are: Bowen 2212, Duggan 2265, Prevey 2940

The next and final count is simple:

Bowen, being the least-popular, is eliminated.

Duggan and Prevey, being the last two remaining candidates, are declared elected to the last two seats.

Bowen's votes are not transferred as it would make no difference.

Final result:

Elected

John Lymburn (UFA)

Colonel Weaver Conservative

Lionel Gibbs Labour

W.W. Prevey Liberal

D.M. Duggan Conservative

This result was much more mixed than 1921 when five Liberals were elected to fill all of Edmonton's seats.

The result in the Edmonton district in 1926, put together with STV results in Calgary, ensured a more mixed representation in the two cities than had been elected in 1921.

In 1921, two Labour, six Liberal and two Independents were elected from the two cities.

Thus three types of MLAs, with one group - Liberals - taking a majority of the seats.

All but five Liberals were elected in Calgary. It could be that the mixed representation elected in Calgary was due to voters having adopted independent thinking from the use of STV in Calgary city elections.

In 1926, under STV, four Conservatives, two Liberals, one UFA, two Labour and one Independent Labour were elected in the two cities.

Thus five types of MLAs, with no one group taking a majority of the seats.

STV ensured that most voters could see themselves among the elected MLAs

In 1921, the number of voters who gave at least one vote to a Liberal candidate is not known. What is known that the candidates received more votes than there were voters who voted so some voters must have given more than one of their votes to Liberal candidates.This uncertainty makes it unclear how many were represented by the Liberals elected, and how many were not.

The most popular Liberal candidate (A.R. McLennan) received more votes than any other candidates but that was only equal to 36 percent of the number of voters. One tenth or more of that 36 percent either did not cast other votes or cast votes for non-Liberal candidates. (This is shown by fact that the next most popular Liberal candidate received a number of votes equal to only 90 percent of the votes that McLennan had, and it cannot be guessed that all of his supporters were also McLennan's supporters.)

Thus, 36 percent of voters found representation at least through its support for McLennan and possibly through votes cast for other Liberal candidates as well.

But if we take 36 percent as the popularity of the Liberals and see that they took all the seats, that meant that 71 percent of the voters did not have their view represented among the MLAs elected.

In 1926, due to the use of single votes, it is much clearer how many had representation among Edmonton's five MLAs.

Of 18,154 voters

3046 found representation when Lymburn was elected on first count.

More found representation as the next two seats were filled.

Then more were used to elect the final two MLAs.

The only voters that definitely did not find representation were Bowen's 2212 votes (12 percent). The 1659 votes that were declared "exhausted" (9 percent) may or may not have been "exhausted" by being marked only for candidates already elected.

Thus

as many as 88 percent of the voters, or as few as 79 per cent, were represented by one of the MLAs elected in 1926. This compares well with the probable 39 percent represented in 1921.

STV thus proved itself a fairer system, with less waste of votes, than Block Voting.

STV similarly passed the test in a comparison between the Edmonton election of 1955, the last Edmonton STV election, and 1959, the first in Edmonton after the re-adoption of First Past The Post, as I will present in a forthcoming blog.

* John W. Leedy, the least popular candidate and the first to be eliminated in the 1926 Edmonton election, had had an amazing career. A Populist Party governor of North Dakota (1896-1900), wealthy owner of Alaska gold-mine, mayor of Valdez, homesteader in Alberta, and, prior to 1926, unsuccessful Non-Partisan League candidate both provincially and federally.

In 1926 at age of 77 he ran for office in Edmonton on a bank-reform platform.

Wikipedia has a page on him.

A blog on his life on this blogsite (under construction) as well.

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In almost all the actual STV elections in Alberta, vote transfers were not what produced most of the mixed, roughly-proportional representation elected. One or two candidates did change from the first-count leaders as compared to the end result.

But most of the proportionality was produced in the simple use of multi-member districts and each voter casting just one vote. This was seen in the first round of counting, before any vote transfers were conducted.

This was seen as early as the first STV election of Edmonton MLAs.

The representation elected in the 1926 Edmonton election was very different from the one-party sweep of Edmonton seats in 1921 (and also different from the one-party sweep of Edmonton seats after STV was replaced by FPTP in 1956).

Most of this fairness was produced by 1926 election's use of the single vote cast in a multi-member district.

Only a couple of the leaders changed through vote transfers conducted during the vote count.

Transfers only added one new party to the mix, while nixing an independent candidate. The Independent candidate was among the leaders in the First Count but did not receive many transfers.

Labour candidate Lionel Gibbs accumulated transfers, passed the Independent's vote tally (so that he survived while the Independent candidate was eliminated) and hung on until the end to be elected.

Transfers also achieved better proportionality by taking one seat from the Liberals and giving it to a Conservative. The Conservative candidates together received about half again more First-Count votes than the Liberal candidates taken together. But the votes were spread over several candidates with only one among the front runners in the First Count. The transfers allowed the overall total support for the Conservatives to come together and to be seen in the election of two members.

The front runners in the first count were 1 Conservative, 1 UFA, 2 Liberals and 1 Independent-Liberal.

The successful candidates in the end were 2 Conservatives, 1 UFA, 1 Liberal and 1 Labour.

A mixed and very proportional result, as in all* STV elections!

* At least the result in all STV elections is mixed (consisting of candidates of different parties) if the number of members being elected is more than three - or no less than the number of major parties involved in the election.

Two seats would produce mixed representation if there are only two parties, with no party receiving more than about 60 percent of the vote.

But two seats could be captured by one party if voter support is unbalanced more than 60-40.

Three seats could be captured by one party only if that party's supporters organize their back-up preferences along party lines and the party has the support of 75 percent of the voters - not often the case.

Four seats are not at all likely to be taken by one party. If any two candidates or parties had at least 20 percent of the vote, which is almost always the case, they each would elect at least one member, with at least one of them taking one or two more seats, producing mixed representation.

A party would likely have to have about 80 percent support in the district to take all four seats in a district.

District Magnitude (number of seats) does make a difference!

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Note the Calgary 1926 STV election was also fair.

STV elections offer range of candidates to voters. This is effect of multiple seats being contested at one time and the transferability of the votes so any candidate can run and be given its fair share of the vote without regard to unrepresentative results produced by vote splitting.

Information on the range of candidates that ran in Calgary's 1926 election can be found in the Glenbow file M-1157-52: "Provincial election. — 1926. — Consists of election results and analysis; articles on election issues; and broadsides for R.H. Parkyn (Labour), public meeting for Liberal candidates, F.C. Potts, anti-prohibition, William Laut, Captain J.T. Shaw, Liberals, and United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) party."

(Odd that anti-prohibitionists were in the running - Prohibition had been cancelled in 1923 and replaced by the government sale of liquor and private beerhalls.)

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Thanks for reading.

See other Montopedia blog: "Hallett's review of the 1926 STV Edmonton election".

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