Ray Martin recently spoke on need to change from FPTP system, citing the fact that a party can be elected to massive majority in the Legislature with but 35 percent of the vote. The former NDP MLA and party leader, whose first election to the legislature was in 1982 during the leadership of Grant Notley, was looking back at Alberta's long history of one-party rule despite mass support for opposition parties.
His remarks were broadcast in the CTV's Sept. 1 Alberta Primetime TV program.
Many might think that pro-rep is a radical and almost impossible step to take and many demand that any replacement of our FPTP system be a mixed system of district elections and proportionally-weighed representation. Thus Mixed Member Proportional.
Usually those qualifications (local rep and at least partly proportional representation) indicate a Mixed Member Proportional, but equally a system of Single Transferable Voting (STV) would combine those two features as well.
You may or may not already know that Alberta used STV for election of city-wide MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary from 1926 to 1955.
Although it produced representation from each city that was more mixed and proportional, its game-changing aspect was not such that it was beyond capabilities of voters or election officials. Taking each city as a multi-member district, it allowed local representation. It produced mixed representation - MLAs of the three main parties (four during the SC period) were usually elected from each city. This meant fair representation of the minorities in each city. In Edmonton the results under STV was very much fairer than the clean sweep of Liberals in 1921 (under Block Voting) and the clean sweep of Conservatives in 1959 (under FPTP).
STV vote transfers look complicated on paper but were found not to be unduly so in practice during the 30-year period of STV's use in Alberta.
FPTP may have the benefit of allowing the voter to see the effect of his or her vote (which in too many cases is to watch it simply fall into the wastebasket). STV too provides just as exact a verification in many cases. The combination of allowing each voter only one vote in a multi-member district ensures that no one group can grab all the district seats, thus ensuring mixed - and thus fairer - representation. Vote transfers merely polish the first-count result - ensuring that the most generally acceptable candidates fill any seats still open after the first count. In this (murkier) stage, less than half the seats - usually much fewer - are taken by candidates not already leading in the first count.
And there is a direct connection between voters' sentiments as shown by votes cast and candidates elected. Unlike under MMP, party lists and functionaries do not have direct influence on the election of members.
As Ray Martin mentioned, under FPTP a party with only 35 percent of the vote can take an absolute majority of seats in the legislature. This is due to the waste of a large portion of the votes, usually at the district level. Votes to any other than the front-runner in each district are disregarded even if they compose a majority of votes in that district.
Gerrymandering too exacerbates that weakness, by allowing a district to be drawn in such a way as to concentrate opposition votes, thus ensuring government victory in other districts. STV multi-member districts, being larger, reduce opportunity for gerrymandering.
The small districts under FPTP split and divide voting blocks. This creates un-balanced waste of votes. As well, variation in district sizes and the wide range of vote percentages collected by the always-victorious front-runner mean there is wide variation in the number of votes required to win a seat.
This creates un-equality in the effectiveness of the vote. Having an effective vote is probably just as important as having the vote in the first place.
In the 2015 Alberta election, a candidate with 5506 votes won the Calgary East seat, the Calgary Cross seat with 4602 votes. This compares badly with a candidate in Calgary-Elbow receiving 6254 vote but not winning and a candidate in Calgary-Glenmore receiving 7015 votes and not wining. Districts create waste. The smaller and more numerous the districts, the more waste.
STV, with its combination of single votes and multi-member districts, and its larger districts creates more mixed and proportional results. However for the voter there is little more to do than under FPTP.
STV is not such a game-changer that it cannot be done in Alberta - or should I say, done again.
The transfers STV entails rarely affect hugely the initial result and are straightforward, albeit time-consuming. On the question of delay of the announcement of results under STV, the answer offered in the Proportional Representation Review of January 1924 was to ask whether it is better to wait a week for the correct results or to get wrong results in a hurry.
P.S.
If the creation of minority government under STV is an obstacle,
I suggest a system where voters cast two ranked votes to ensure that there is proportional representation (STV) at the district level, that a party is given a majority of the seats and that that party has the support of a majority of voters.
One vote would be cast for the district representative elected in a grouped district electing multiple representatives through Single Transferable Voting (STV).
The other vote would be cast at the party level, to see that only a party with the majority of the votes would form majority government. The party level vote count would be held according to Preferential Voting (Alternative Voting).
If no party secured a majority of votes in the initial vote, the least popular parties would be eliminated one by one and their votes transferred until a party accumulated a majority of the votes. Extra members would be provided, if necessary, to provide a majority of seats for the party that secures a majority of the vote. (see my other blogs on Montopedia for details.)
Such a system would ensure that the elected government would have the endorsement of a majority of the voters, a basic minimum of democracy.
Thanks for reading.
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