Catherine Helen Spence,
who provided much of the impetus of the PR movement in far-away Australia at the turn of the last century (around the year 1900),
once applauded a man she called:
"Robert Tyson of Canada".
She proudly claimed to have converted him to the Pro-Rep cause when she visited Canada in 1892.
Who was this "Robert Tyson of Canada"?
A man with a varied background:
Born in 1845. A British immigrant. Lived in Toronto in early 1900s.
Activist in the Single Tax movement, but then converted to the pro-rep cause in early 1890s.
A man with vision and energy --
Editor of the Proportional Representation Review magazine in 1903.
He likely had been active in the cause since the 1890s. He likely met the Australian STV campaigner Catherine Helen Spence at that time when she visited Canada.
Spence herself applauded Tyson's work in 1902 at an Australian STV rally.
See the Proportional Representation Review, Dec. 1902, p. 78
and see my blog on the event:
1900 An article on P.R. by Robert Tyson included in Eltwood Pomeroy's book By the People Arguments and Authorities for Direct Legislaiton or the Initiative and the Referendum.
In 1901 Tyson stated that for the previous five years he had been keeping himself "informed on the current history of P.R. in many parts of the world," including Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and many parts of the U.S.
In 1901 he summed up the history to that date of the Proportional Representation League:
Tyson, Robert. "The League and the Review". The Proportional Representation Review. Vol. 1. HathiTrust. pp. 73–74. hdl:2027/coo.31924011886177.
In 1903 Tyson helped give the pro-rep cause a higher profile in Canada when he moderated the STV election of the executive of the Trades and Labour Congress. (Proportional Representation Review Dec. 1902, p. 78; Dec. 1903)
Tyson served as secretary of the Canadian/U.S. Proportional Representation League from 1904 to 1912. His enthusiasm helped push the movement through its so-called lean years, 1901-1912. He wrote a series of articles for the Grain Growers Guide that helped launch a new wave of interest in STV in 1910s.
In 1908 Tyson was tapped to write the "Proportional Representation" entry in the New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, edited by Wiliam D.P. Bliss. In his article he explained PR and gave a detailed international roundup of PR and STV at that early date.
That encyclopedia also included a biography of Tyson himself:
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Robert Tyson
exponent of Direct Legislation and Proportional Representation
Born Canterbury, England 1845.
largely self-educated
as a boy worked in a machine-shop
Shorthand clerk in railway offices, then employed as newspaper reporter and editor in Lancashire.
Came to Canada in 1870, settling in Toronto.
Did newspaper work until 1876 when he was appointed stenographic reporter to the Court of Queen’s Bench, later a division of the High Court of Justice.
Editor of P.R. Review, then editor of the P.R. Department of the Equity Series of Philadelphia.
He has conducted many elections for societies, labour-unions, etc, and addrest meetings on the proportional principle, is in touch with the movement and current history of PR in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.
Mr. Tyson’s economic views are based on those of Henry George, and for some years he worked ardently in the Single-Tax cause.
Later becoming imprest with the necessity of improved political conditions in order to forward social reform, he directed his work more toward direct legislation and P.R., making a specialty of the latter.
Author of several pamphlets and many serial articles on electoral reform.
Address 10 Harbord Street, Toronto, Canada
==========
As touched on above, In 1912, he wrote a series of articles for the Grain Growers Guide.
By the time he died in 1917 at the age of 71, Calgary and five BC municipalities had adopted STV for their city elections.
He did not suffer fools gladly --
A diatribe he published in the Proportional Representation Review was aimed at well-known muckraker journalist Lincoln Steffens.
Steffens had described the herculean and self-sacrificing efforts of a volunteer committee of Chicago citizens to elect a progressive slate of representatives. Tyson says all that effort was "simply an endeavour to counteract the results of the foolish and vicious plan of election by single-member districts or by the Block Vote."
Yet, Tyson moaned, "Steffens manifests the usual indifference to real remedies" such as STV.
For the same reason he criticized Goldwin Smith, an opinion moulder in Canada at that time. Tyson wrote that Smith "constantly and most ably attacks the partisan party system of politics in Canada yet will not touch pro-rep - nor Direct Legislation - with a 10-foot pole, although these are the only methods by which the evils of the present party system could be abated."
He was a practical man --
Tyson wrote in 1904 that "The bane of pro-rep has been the complexities introduced by those who aim at an impossible and needless mathematical accuracy. In most actual STV elections the candidates who head the poll on the count of first choices are those ultimately elected...
Therefore the transfers are of secondary importance, and the essential point is the use of the single vote and multiple-member districts...
The use of some plan of transfer is necessary as a safeguard, but when transfer is a minor feature, why place so much stress on the particular method and introduce endless complications? The common people object to submitting their ballots to a complicated system of counting that they cannot understand."
(Tyson, "Appendix" in Cridge, Proportional Representation (1904), p. 61-62)
More on this in the Montopedia blog:
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Some of Tyson's other writings
here is article where Tyson discussed how people are suggesting adapting party-list PR so it does not waste so many votes but Tyson says such adaptations complicate vote counts. This was likely written around 1912.
Tyson states that in his opinion any attempt to make list PR more flexible (waste fewer votes) leads to more complication while STV is flexible from the start - he says it better.
Arena magazine, volume 41 page 262 of 675
Robert Tyson "Proportional Representation News"
Arena magazine - Volume 41 : B.O. Flower (ed.) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Among points Tyson made is that any threshold or barrier is multiplied by the number of parties (or something like that)
so we today see in Israel that a threshold of 3.25 percent adds up to 8.8 percent of the vote not being used to elect anyone. (In 2023 that proportion of ineffective votes put Benjamin Netanyahu in the prime minister's chair, and his presence there tipped the balance in favour of a strong-arm response to the attacks on Israel in late 2023 and the resulting large number of deaths among civilians living in the Gaza strip and then in Lebanon by summer 2024.)
While under STV, only an amount overall just less than one quota more or less is not used to elect anyone.
This figure of wasted votes is not multiplied but in most cases is about five percent or more in each district.
Even the unusually large District Magnitude of 21 (as used in NSW Australia) means about 5 percent would be wasted, including exhausted votes, if any.
Usually STV uses DM of five or even fewer (five or fewer members in a district) so that would mean about 17 percent wasted in each district or more. But still that is light years ahead of FPTP where as much as 82 percent are not used to elect the member.
Securing an Effective Ballot
In another article Tyson says a conference of Proportionalists (that's what we are too!) passed a resolution to add a sub-title to the name Proportional Representation Society - "For securing an Effective Ballot." (Proportional Representation Society at that time included Proportionalists from both Canada and the U.S.)
This article is in the Twentieth Century Magazine, vol. 6 page 474.
(Twentieth Century Magazine is available through Google e-books.
Alternatively you can go to Twentieth Century Magazine 6-7 1912, p. 78 (p. 473 on overall pagination).)
This article gives Tyson's address as 20 Harbord Street. This address appears to be now on part of the grounds of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library building.
Effective Voting is what PR comes down to -- to ensure that as many votes are used to actually elect anyone as can be economically arranged.
Because any waste potentially leads to un-representative results and to unsatisfied voters.
In the "Proportional Representation" entry in the New Encyclopedia of Social Reform (1908) Tyson took pains to explain quota.
To express the importance of quota, he wrote where 70,000 votes are cast and seven are to be elected, "every candidate who obtains 10,000 votes is assured of election and every party is entitled to one member per 10,000 votes." (This is the Hare quota - now STV systems use the smaller Droop quota.)
Proportional results through high rate of effective votes.
=======================
(The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform (1908) gave the titles of some other of Tyson's writings:
P.R. in Belgium (2 pamphlets)*
P.R. in Switzerland
Voting Methods for Clubs and Societies
A Primer on D.L. and P.R. [D.L. being Direct Legislation].
I have not seen copies of these.
And don't see them in Canadiana online.
* Bibliography of Municipal Government (available online at Canadiana) lists the pamphlets as "The Belgium System of P.R." published in Arena, Dec. 1903, p. xxx, 591-597, and Arena, Feb. 1904, p. xxxi, 157-166,
Also a list of books on PR (1904) lists these by Tyson:
1902 Needed political reforms (Number one) Direct legislation, or the Initiative and the referendum and the recall. (Arena, Nov., 1902)
1902 Needed political reforms (Number two) Proportional Representation or effective voting. (Arena, Dec. 1902)
1903 The Belgium system of PR (Arena Dec. 1903)
1904 Practical measures for preserving democracy (Arena, Feb. 1904)
I. Two arguments against DL Eltweed Plmeroy
II. How PR has worked in Belgium Tyson
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Robert Tyson was editor of the Proportional Representation League newsletter, the Proportional Representation Review, from 1901 to 1913.
He was also author of several pamphlets on PR and PR-STV:
I have seen reference to one that he wrote entitled:
Proportional Representation -- its Principles, Practices and Progress
but have been unable to find a copy anywhere.
Here is an article where Tyson discussed inefficiency of trying to make party-list PR use back-up preferences, around 1912, I think. By that time, Tyson had seen party-list PR elections in Belgium and elsewhere, and he had decided that STV was a better system, being more flexible and giving voters more liberty.
Arena magazine, volume 41 page 262 of 675
Robert Tyson "Proportional Representation News"
includes interesting statement on how any attempt to make list PR more flexible leads to more complication while STV is flexible from the start - he says it better.
Tyson also wrote an article in the Canadian Municipal Journal, 1907:
A series of PR-positive articles that Tyson contributed to the Grain Growers Guide in 1912 can be found in the Peel's Prairie Provinces website.
Tyson in another 1912 article* discussed Securing an Effective Ballot. He says a conference of Proportionalists (that's what we all should call ourselves!) passed a resolution to add a sub-title to the name of the Proportional Representation Society - "For securing an Effective Ballot"
That is what it comes down to -- to ensure that as many votes are used to actually elect anyone as can be economically arranged (As well as that each party is represented proportionally as much as possible)
Because any waste potentially leads to un-representative results
and to unsatisfied voters.
see the Montopedia blog https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/robert-tyson-a-pioneer-of-canadian-electoral-reform for more info.
*Twentieth Century Magazine available through Google e-books
vol. 6 page 474
alternatively you can go to Twentieth Century Magazine 6-7 1912, p. 78 (p. 473 on overall pagination)
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What did Robert Tyson Write?
Single Non-Transferable Voting and Limited Voting
In an article Tyson wrote in 1912, he said that the Single Non-Transferable Voting system, the so-called Japanese system - where each voter casts one vote in a multi-member district but the vote is non-transferable - was crudely effective at providing mixed representation roughly proportional to a parties' standings in a district.
Limited Voting is where each voter casts fewer votes than the number of open seats but more than one. Tyson said LV was not quite as good at providing proportional representation as SNTV. (Grain Growers Guide, August 7, 1912, p. 10 (issues of the GGG are available for viewing on the Peel's Prairie Provinces website))
By 1912, Canada historically had seen Limited Voting used - to elect Toronto MLAs in 1886 and 1890. In 1915 Toronto was still - or again - using multi-member districts but - for some reason - was using non-proportional Block Voting instead of semi-proportional Limited Voting to elect its MPPs.
There has not been an instance where SNTV has been used to elect a member of a government in Canada.
But SNTV by all accounts would be more effective at providing representation that would be much more proportional than Canada's First Past The Post system currently does.
Such is seen in elections in the Pacific island-nation of Vanuatu, for example.
(for info on Vanuatu, see the Montopedia blog
Under SNTV, there are no vote transfers but, as Tyson pointed out in 1912 in the pages of the Grain Growers Guide, SNTV provides crude proportionality even though it does not allow vote transfers.
Effect of vote transfers over-estimated
(By the by, in almost all the actual STV elections in Alberta, one or two candidates did change from the first-count leaders as compared to the end result. But in a few STV elections, all the front runners in the First Count went on to be elected in the end, with no change caused by vote transfers.
But mixed, roughly-proportional representation was produced by the use of STV in Edmonton and Calgary elections. But it was not vote transfers that mostly did it.
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. But most of the fairness did not arise from effects of transfers.
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 front runners in the First Count changed through vote transfers conducted during the vote count. (Tyson's entry in The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform (1908) says that pattern is perfectly understandable - vote transfers are from weaker candidates to stronger ones, and the stronger ones to a large degree are the leaders already in the 1st Count.)
The front runners in the first count included candidates of three parties. Transfers only added one new party to the mix, while nixing an Independent-Liberal candidate. The Independent-Lib candidate, among the front-runners in the First Count, did not receive many transfers. On the other hand, Labour candidate Lionel Gibbs accumulated transfers. Gibbs's vote tally eventually passed the Ind-Lib. candidate's vote tally. Gibbs, not the Ind-Lib candidate, hung on until the end and was elected.
The Conservative candidates together received about half again more First-Count votes than the Liberal candidates taken together. But in the 1st Count, the Liberal party had more candidates in the front runners than the Conservative party. The Liberal party had two candidates among the front runners in the 1st Count but the combined vote tallies of its candidates made the party eligible only for one seat.
The Conservative party had one candidate among the front runners in the 1st Count but the combined vote tallies of its candidates made the party eligible for two seats.
Transfers took one seat from the Liberals and gave it to a Conservative. The transfers allowed that total party support to come together and to be seen in the elected members. Thus vote transfers produced better proportionality in the end, polishing the basic fairness established by single voting in a multi-member district.
Edmonton 1926
The front runners in the 1st Count:
1 Conservative, 1 UFA, 2 Liberals and 1 Independent-Liberal.
The successful candidates in the end:
2 Conservatives, 1 UFA, 1 Liberal and 1 Labour.
so mostly the same despite vote transfers
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Tyson's writing helped push Canadians (in western Canada anyway) to adopt STV.
And at one time Canada was among the leaders in the world of this method of voting.
Historical note:
STV's Big Four in 1926
Tasmania seems an outlandish land, but for a good while, western Canada was grouped with it.
By 1926 STV was being used to elect legislators in four countries in the world:-
- Tasmania/Australia,
- the Republic of Ireland,
- Malta (then a British colony),
- and western Canada (provincial legislators in Alberta and Manitoba).
Canada actually used STV in a city election before Ireland (or any part of the United Kingdom). Calgary had held two STV city elections prior to Sligo being the first city in the UK to elect its aldermen through STV.
(for info on Sligo's election, see https://www.historyireland.com/pr-the-sligo-borough-election-of-1919/
For info on Calgary's STV elections, see
But STV was no flash in the pan. All of the "big four" except Canadians still use STV.
Ireland soon used STV for national elections and has used it ever since.. Canada unfortunately never has.
Irish cities have used STV ever since 1919. Calgary was the last Canadian city to use STV, in 1971.
The most recent Sligo STV election is described here:
(Interestingly, the three Sligo wards elect different number of members: one elects five, one elects six and the other elects seven. This flexibility allows the wards to actually exist on the ground and not just be an artificial creation as under the single-member wards used in Edmonton today.)
STV was used over several decades in Canada:
In Alberta and Manitoba, provincial elections used STV until 1955, for more than 30 years.
Alberta used STV to elect MLAs eight times.
Manitoba used STV in nine provincial elections.
Twenty Canadian cities and smaller municipalities used STV in a total of more than 150 elections.
Calgary used STV in its city elections from 1917 to 1961 and in 1971.
Winnipeg used STV in its city elections from the WWI era to 1969.
It is time to bring STV back!
Thanks for reading. Check out my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.
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What is STV?
From a 1902 reform magazine:
"Thinking it well to have in every number something by way of a brief explanation of proportional voting, I repeat in this number the following:
Proportional representation means the use of a reasonable and scientific system of voting instead of the present stupid, unfair and inefficient procedure.
Methods: There are several systems by which the principle of proportional representation may be given effect to. Large electoral districts, each electing several members, are a necessary feature. The "quota" plan is usually employed. It means that a quota of the votes elects one representative.
To arrive at the quota, the number of valid votes cast is divided by the number of seats to be filled. For instance in a seven-member district any one-seventh of the voters could elect one representative and the other six-sevenths could not interfere with their choice.
The three principal systems of proportional representation are
- the Free List as used in Switzerland and Belgium [party-list PR],
- the Hare system as used in Tasmania [STV], and
- the Gove System as advocated in Massachusetts.*
The Preferential Vote [Alternative Voting/Instant Run-off Voting]
This is used in the election of single officers such as a mayor. It is not strictly a form of pro-rep but is akin thereto, and uses part of the same voting methods. The object of preferential voting is to encourage the free nomination of candidates and to obtain always a clear majority at one balloting, no matter how many candidates are nominated."
(From the Proportional Representation Review Dec. 1902, p. 77) (Hathi Trust online resource, page 81/180)
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* Brief description of the Gove system can be found in Wikipedia: Single Transferable Voting under "Related systems" and in the Wikipedia article "Indirect STV". Basically, it is a transferable voting system where candidates, not voters alone, determine how votes are transferred. Sometimes both vote tallies and candidates are used to set vote transfers, so votes do have input into how votes are to be transferred. Ranked votes are not used.
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