"STV: Alberta's Past - and Future?"

Unpublished magazine article "STV: Alberta's Past - and Future?" By Tom Monto

submitted to a magazine but not published as BC prepared for a referendum on proportional representation held in late 2018

[written in the summer of 2018]

As BC prepares for a referendum this autumn on proportional representation [written in the summer of 2018], they should take a look at Alberta's experience with Proportional Representation from 1917 to 1970. During this period many Albertans elected their city councils and their provincial representatives using Single Transferable Votes, the so-called British system of Proportional Representation. Critics of the proposed STV system in BC question why that province should adopt a system used in Ireland, Malta and Tasmania but overlook Alberta's successful STV experience right next door.

Under Alberta's system of STV, Calgary and Edmonton were organized into multi-member districts and each city voter cast one vote, but were allowed to mark back-up choices. These secondary choices were for use in case the voter's first preference was elected (to help another also supported become elected) or in case their first choice was eliminated (so that they would help another still somewhat favoured become elected over a less-favoured candidate). The minimum number of votes required to become elected, the Quota, was established in each election, and any candidate achieving this was elected, with any surplus votes being transferred based on the secondary preferences marked on the votes if any. If there were still seats remaining open, the least popular candidates were dropped off with their votes being transferred to other candidates based on marked secondary preferences if any.

Devised in the 1850s, STV was put into effect in Tasmania, Australia, first at the municipal level then at the state (provincial) level. A city in Ohio adopted it in 1915, the first in North America, and only two years later, Calgary was the first place in Canada to adopt the system, to elect its councillors and commissioners. Calgary would keep the system right into the 1960s, and to this day it held more elections under that system than any other city in North America.

Voter turn-out swelled with STV - part of that was the novelty, of course. Thus STV would help address the problem of low voter turn-out in Alberta's city elections.

And the councillors elected under STV were seen as an improvement on previous councils. The Calgary Herald, for example, said the new council elected in 1917 was a "better all-around legislative and administrative body than we have had for some years."

Cities at the time had generally easy transitions to STV for city elections. The cities were electing their city councils at-large with no wards dividing the cities, so a city did not need to create the multi-member district required for STV - it was already there.

Edmonton followed Calgary in 1923 but used STV only for five annual municipal elections. There was anti-STV sentiment among city officials, and the transferring of votes and seat allocation were complicated by the guarantee that the southside (Old Strathcona) would have a set representation. Edmonton reverted to block voting (electors had as many votes as seats to fill) in the city as a single district in 1928. Even when in 1971 the city went to wards dividing the city, and three councillors were elected to each ward, voters had up to three votes each, thus preventing any proportionality from emerging. And now with single-member wards there is still no attempt at proportionality of representation.

Lethbridge held just one STV city election, in 1928. As you might surmise from the brief description of the STV process above, sometimes transferring votes took days and such was the case of Lethbridge's one STV election. Thirteen separate counts were conducted as candidates were elected or eliminated. This was one of the reasons the system was thrown out after just one election.

Another reason for Lethbridge to end its STV experience was that the final composition of the Lethbridge council after the 13 counts was not markedly different from the leading candidates in the first count based on the voters' first preferences. This expectation of significant change through vote transfers should not have been raised in the first place. Already in the first count in an STV election, even before any vote transfers, the leading candidates belong to a variety of parties and represent the substantial groups in the district. Those who champion STV say even negative results such as this should be seen as a virtue of the electoral system. Vote transfers are meant to be safeguards, not to be the main aspect of the system. But still the lack of obvious change was discouraging for those who had spent hours performing the transfers.

Cambridge, Massachusetts uses STV, and it has been estimated that in almost half of its elections the final composition of the council is identical to the first count results. That of course, means that in more than half the cases, it is not identical - it is more representational.

Even in elections where no turn-over takes place, STV proves itself -- STV's combination of multi-member districts and voters having only one vote each achieves good proportionality on its own, even without transferability of the votes.

However despite its shortcomings (delayed election results and apparent unneeded complication), the Clerk of the Alberta Legislature, John D. Hunt, led a campaign in favour of switching from First Past The Post to STV for city and provincla elections. He saw its many years of successful use in Tasmania by that time and also its theoretical support among such reformers as John Stuart Mill and Sandford Fleming.

Under his influence, transferable votes were used in the 1923 referendum held on retaining Prohibition or replacing it with one of three alternatives. As it happened, Option D, beerhalls and government sale of liquor, received a majority of first-choice votes so no vote transfers were needed. (Government sale of liquor was in effect into the 1990s, when it was abolished with no referendum being held.)

Then the United Farmers of Alberta government fulfilled a campaign promise of electoral reform by bringing in STV to elect MLAs in Alberta's cities, and the use of STV in Alberta's single-member rural districts. It had been only the strength of the UFA groundswell that had allowed the movement to overcome the barriers presented by the previous unbalanced electoral system. One such barrier was the system of block voting used in Edmonton and Calgary in 1921. Voters were given up to five votes each. Edmonton's large Liberal voting block, with less than a third of the votes, had taken all the seats, the rest of the vote being split between two Labour parties, the Conservative party, the UFA and several Independent candidates. (The Calgary result was more diverse, electing Labour, Independents and a Liberal, due to its stronger workers movement and perhaps its experience of STV at the city level.)

In STV's first trial in a provincial general election, in 1926, the composition of Edmonton's MLAs changed dramatically. Edmonton elected two Conservative, one Liberal, one Labour and one UFA MLA, roughly respecting the parties' standings in the polling booths.

But the Alberta experience showed that STV is not a party list sort of Pro-rep system. Voters cast their preferential votes for candidates, not parties, and sometimes voters favour a candidate that a party would not naturally place at the top of its party list if the election was held under party list rules. We see this already in the 1926 election.

The only Edmonton MLA to run for re-election, the one that would have naturally topped the Liberal party list if there had been one, was not the Liberal elected. Instead a former city councillor was elected under the Liberal banner. This was seen again and again in provincial elections held under STV. This phenomena, which STV authorities have nicknamed "deelections," proves the power of voters under STV and is probably why it is not enthusiastically adopted by party machines.

However this power of the voter to bypass party lists also is a special virtue in these troubled times. Whereas party conventions may choose the most vociferous or doctrinaire candidate to carry the party's banner in an upcoming election, the voters generally always are more moderate and will choose a moderate candidate of the same party if given the chance. Thus the use of STV could obviate the need for a party nomination meeting while ensuring that the party as a whole would still receive the same number of votes and seats. Through transferring votes from overly successful slate candidates and from poorly ranking slate candidates, the party would obtain at least as many votes as if it had run only one candidate but the person elected would likely be more suited to the temper of the electorate than if he had been chosen by party convention and other party candidates prevented from running.

And in 1924, Alberta rural constituencies also were put to using STV. In these single-member districts, the effect of STV was not proportionality but instead to ensure that a candidate had to have a majority of the vote to get a seat. (The government's decision to retain single-member constituencies allowed it to avoid what befell BC's STV movement in 2009. The BC plan was to group together rural districts into multi-member districts to allow proportionality. However, voters balked when they saw the massive size of the proposed districts and sank the proposal.)

In Alberta's case, small districts were preserved at the expense of proportionality. The lack of proportionality was seen in 1944 when the with 25 percent of the province-wide vote received but two seats in the 57-member legislature. The placed second, sometimes a very close second, in 30 rural constituencies but took none of the rural seats.

In the multi-member districts in Alberta's cities, STV proved itself - the party with the most votes got a majority of the seats and significant minorities got representation proportional to their success at the polls. By basing the system on city-wide districts, the districts had at least the minimum number of candidates in each city/district to allow proportionality. Five is said to be the minimum needed, with any higher number convenient to the ballot sheets even better.

By the end of Alberta's experience with STV, in the 1950s, Edmonton had seven seats elected in its single district, allowing a high level of proportionality. Disproving charges that Pro-rep causes an increase in the number of parties represented, only three parties had candidates elected in Edmonton in 1955. A fourth party, the NDP, had run candidates but even all its candidates together received less votes than the quota necessary to capture a seat so it was rightfully blocked out.

And that high level of proportionality created stress for the government in 1955. By that time the Social Credit government led by Premier Ernest Manning was fading in popularity. Only three SC MLAs were elected in Edmonton in 1955, and the same in Calgary. This was proportional to their votes but disappointing for the government.

The use of STV ensured that in rural three-way races, the choice of the most voters would be elected. And here too the SC government faced trouble in 1955. There were many SC candidates who received the most votes in their rural districts but did not win majorities. And after subsequent vote transfers and counts four did not win "their" seats.

This plus the strong opposition elected in the cities created a large opposition of 24, large anyway by Alberta standards. Manning's government with only 46 percent of the vote had secured 66 percent of the seats. But this was not seen as good enough. Not only was there a large Legislative opposition, but a few of the opposition MLAs had been elected in rural districts in southern Alberta, the SC heartland. And a few of the elected Opposition MLAs had run under coalition labels, such as the Liberal-Conservative candidate in Okotoks-High River, a sign of growing solidarity in the anti-SC camp. This evidence of a growing threat to the government's survival spelled the end of the use of STV-PR at the provincial level.

As cover for its cancelling of STV, the government pointed to the "large" number of spoiled ballots caused by what it described as a "complex" system - Edmonton had suffered 5 percent spoiled ballots; Calgary 3 percent in 1955. The government said a return to "X" voting in single member districts would stop this "disenfranchising" of voters.

However, STV had its defenders. They pointed out that without STV many more than 5 percent of the voters would be effectively disenfranchised when their votes would be wasted under the "X" voting system. They said the spoiled ballots merely pointed to the need for a public information campaign. And even one SC MLA (but only one) - Rose Wilkinson - opposed the change saying that SC Premier William Aberhart himself had supported STV and her Calgary constituents still supported it.

Despite opposition, the government split the cities into single-member districts and dispensed with STV. The next election saw the Social Credit party, the most popular of the parties, reap the benefit that comes to large parties from first past the post elections. SC candidates were elected to all but one of the seats in Edmonton and Calgary. In Edmonton no seats went to the Liberals, Conservatives or , although the candidates of each party received more votes than the single most popular SC candidate.

Instead of losing many rural areas as it had done in 1955, the government won almost all the rural districts, although in many cases not getting vote majorities - these elections would have been an impossibility under the old STV system. The government with but 56 percent of the vote received 61 seats, leaving only four seats to the opposition. And more or less, that is the sort of lopsided results that we have had in Alberta ever since.

By 1955, only Calgary in Alberta, and Winnipeg in Manitoba, were still conducting their city elections along STV lines. Calgary brought in wards dividing the city, but there were only six wards for the 12-member council so multiple members (two) were elected in each, providing a degree of proportionality. But by early 1970s, Calgary voters turned against the use of STV and Calgary moved to single-member wards to elect its councillors. Edmonton has single-member wards now as well, with little regard for minority groups within the city.

If Alberta's cities want to increase voter turn-out, want to secure more representative city councils. they should adopt STV. It proved itself for decades. If however adopting STV and large multi-member wards, perhaps each covering half a city and electing six councillors, is too radical to accomplish in the short term, there are other mechanisms that would increase the proportionality of Alberta city councils.

Combining each two wards into one and giving voters only one vote each (even if not transferable) would create a degree of proportionality.

If ward redistricting is contentious, a city could instead add a small number of seats to the city council - Edmonton's chamber was built to hold six more seats than it currently holds. Some cities such as Seattle have created a degree of proportionality through the use of at-large seats. These are elected city-wide, with voters getting only one vote each, providing traction for a dispersed voting block. Or a city could use its additional city councillors to increase the proportionality of the ward elections by increasing the number of seats in each ward, as long as each voter only has a single vote.

Or to secure a degree of proportionality without multi-member wards, the few additional seats could be allocated to the few most popular unsuccessful candidates, thus giving representation to what would otherwise be a large number of wasted votes. These innovations would likely lead to an increased feeling of vote effectiveness and thus a higher voter turn-out.

And mayors could be elected through Alternative Voting using Single Transferable votes in which a candidate would have to have a majority of the votes to become mayor. This would allow minority groups to coalesce around a generally acceptable candidate and prevent the election of a candidate with support from but one large block.

Just as Calgary's and Edmonton's experience of STV helped pave the way for its use at the provincial level, a new successful experience of STV at the municipal level may inspire the provincial government to return Alberta to STV at the provincial level. Over the long term, this would achieve more balanced representation reflective of voter sentiment, a stronger democracy and increased faith in the system.

(Sources:

Bob Hesketh, "The Abolition of Preferential Voting in Alberta," Prairie Forum 1987 Spring

A Report on Alberta Elections, 1905-1982

J. Paul Johnston and Miriam Koene, "Learning History's Lessons Anew. The Use of STV in Canadian Municipal Elections," in Shaun Bowler and Bernard Grofman (editors), Elections in Australia, Ireland and Malta Under the Single Transferable Vote, Reflections on an Imbedded Institution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2000. (p. 205-247)

More information on BC-STV in my blog "BC-STV"