Famous Canadian innovator Sandford Fleming was a strong fan of electoral reform. He called for proportional representation in the 1890s. He issued "An Appeal for Essays on the Rectification of Parliament" in 1892. (available on the CIHM Canadiana website)
Fleming pointed to the failure of Canada's electoral system (and also the U.S.'s and Britain's) in providing what we expect form our government:
to maintain peace and security,
to increase prosperity and wealth,
to advance moral and intellectual development, and
generally to promote the good and the good-will of the people." (page 9)
We all agree, he said, that representatives, not monarchs or dictators, are the bet route to achieve these goals. But "it is impossible to attain these goals so long as MPs continue to be chosen according to the present method of election."
This, he wrote , was due to two causes:
- the MPs are chosen by a plurality (only occasionally a majority) of votes in each district.
- the division of the people and the representatives into two great parties.
[Canada now has four or five major parties, This flowering was done in the face of the binary FPTP system that we still use 1230 years after Fleming wrote those words, The flowering fought into existence as a natural development of a more sophisticated social and economic structure. But still the two old-line parties derive benefits from the FPTP system while the three or so lesser parties suffer under-representation. It is long past time to adopt the more equitable reforms that Fleming and others proposed back 130 years ago.]
The following year he published the best of the essays he had received.
Among the contributors was Catherine Helen Spence, South Australia's leading STV activist. She had toured North America for the cause that year. Her call for "Effective Voting," as she called STV, submitted under the pseudonym Southern Cross, is well worth a read.
Another essay, submitted by "Per Asperam ad Astra" (identity unknown), provided a structure for analyzing effectiveness of representation.
... The first essential of representative government therefore is that it should be popular government —
... it must be the nation in miniature, a small typical representative nation... microcosm of the people...
There should be no party of any strength, no sentiment of any power, no principle of any vitality in the country which was not also present in parliament in a strength proportioned to its strength in the nation. (page 50)...The existing system of government in Canada might be more properly described as responsible than representative.
Any system of electoral representation completely consistent with the purposes of representative government indicated above must possess the following essentials:
(1). It must enable every elector to be represented in parliament.
(2). It must give every elector the right and opportunity to vote for whoever he wishes to represent him.
(3). It must enable electors scattered throughout the country to unite their votes for a common candidate.
(4). It must ensure the representation in parliament of all classes and shades of opinion in the country, whose supporters have attained the numerical strength necessary to entitle their candidate to a seat.
The existing electoral system [the FPTP system] lacks not one but all of these essentials.
1. It does not enable every elector to be represented in parliament.
2.It does not give every elector the opportunity to vote for the man he desires to represent him.
3. It does not enable electors scattered throughout the country to unite their votes for a common candidate,
4. Nor does it by any means ensure representation in parliament to all classes and shades of opinion in the community, even where these classes or opinions have attained to large proportions, and even a large degree of public favour.
It further causes these issues
(1). By it a very large number of the people do not obtain representation in parliament and it is possible that a majority of the people are not represented.
(2). It involves the existence of constituencies, arbitrary electoral districts, for the candidates in which the electors are forced to vote, and outside of which they are not permitted to support any candidate by their votes. By this system of arbitrary localization of votes it prevents citizens and parties of national strength by local weakness from combining their votes to elect a representative.
(3). By thus weakening the minor parties and interests of the state and preventing their representation in the legislature, it tends to unduly encourage party government and divide the people and the parliament into two parties, who monopolize the House and prevent that independence and originality of thought that are essential to the well-being and progress of the nation.
"The elector is entitled to vote in the nation and in any part of it, and for any citizen of it, and to unite his vote not only with his neighbours but with his countrymen despite the imposition of arbitrary lines of constitutional demarcation [the electoral districts]." (p. 52)
The liberty to vote for any candidate is an important point, one that would/should reduce waste of votes and provide both the benefits of at-large elections plus the benefits of district voting. It has never been used in Canada - when "Per Asperam ad Astra" proposed it in 1890s the communication network was not up to it. Telephones were still fairly scarce. But with today's communication (not computers - keep computers out of our voting system, please) the modern electoral system should be able to allow voters to cast votes for a candidate anywhere.
More extracts from the published essays are in April 2020 blog "Sanford Fleming - Essays on Rectification"
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