An article in CBC News (Cameon Macleod, September 2019)) got STV wrong. And quite a bit more wrong as well.
Macleod wrote on STV: "If a voter's first choice didn't win on the first round of counting, their vote would go to their second choice, and so on until all the seats were filled."
Not quite right.
Better to say:
"If a voter's first choice didn't win on the first round of counting, that did not mean the candidate would not win in the end.
If not all the seats were taken by candidates achieving quota in the first count, then subsequent counts were held where votes were taken away from candidates who had no chance of winning and given to other candidates, based on back-up preferences marked by the voter. Eventually all the seats were filled as the field of candidates thinned. A candidate won a seat if his or her combination of first-choice preferences and votes that had been transferred from other candidates exceeded quota. Or in other cases, a candidate would win if he or she was among the few remaining candidates when the field of candidates thinned to the same number as the number of remaining open seats.
So even if a candidate did not win on the first count, he or she might win later through transfers or being generally acceptable enough to avoid elimination."
Now was that so difficult?
Yes, it does sound complicated, but it is actually not that complicated in practice.
Nine STV provincial elections in Manitoba and eight STV provincial elections in Alberta - albeit just in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg - went successfully and relatively smoothly, and with no arguments afterwards about their fairness.
Unfortunately Univ. of Lethb. prof Jansen was quoted as saying "You can imagine how long it would take," Jansen said, adding the vote-counting process could take up to a week. "Especially in the 1920s, when we don't have access to things like computers or even ready access to things like calculators."
Three things on that :
!. One or two candidates in each STV district usually knew on election night that they had been elected. Their vote tally in the first count passed the quota so they were immediately declared elected. And others knew in the first couple days, one way or the other.
2. Don't you think it is better to wait for even up to a week to get fair results than to have sloppy almost-random results instantly ?
3. You don't need a computer or a calculator to move votes from an eliminated candidate to others. There is no math involved except addition to the running total. Not so difficult. The movement of surplus votes, also a part of STV, takes a little more math but no more than multiplication by a fraction.
Macleod wrote "Few people know that in Manitoba, Alberta, and — for a brief time — British Columbia, voters were represented by multi-member constituencies which they elected by ranking candidates in order of preference." But BC never had STV. It did have multiple-member districts and used ranked voting, but oddly it used Alternative Voting to elect each rep in a separate election contest with a separate ballot for each seat.
In Alberta and Manitoba, STV was used in the major cities and Alternative Voting in single-member districts in the rural districts.
Macleod says the Manitoba government brought in Alternative Voting for rural areas mostly out of partisan self-interest.
He wrote: "The United Farmers of Manitoba had taken over government from the Liberals in 1922. The UFM's support base was concentrated in the country, giving them an edge in a winner-takes-all system."
But if the United Farmers thought they benefited by winner-take-all, why not just stick with FPTP?
No, the Farmers wanted fairer elections, but with the large area of rural districts and the poor transportation abilities of the time, grouping districts to form multi-member districts was thought impracticable. But ensuring that the successful candidate would have to have a majority of the votes in the district was do-able through Alternative Voting.
Then Jensen apparently said this:
"Adding to the dissatisfaction of Winnipeg voters was the fact that the percentage of seats given to the city was vastly lower than what it would have been entitled to based on its population, Jansen said. Gerrymandering — the practice of redrawing political boundaries for partisan advantage — was also common."
The number of seats that Winnipeg had was a separate thing from STV. Under STV as under FPTP, Winnipeg could have as many seats as desired. And under STV Winnipeg was eventually given 12 seats up from ten and could have been given more if desired. Edmonton and Calgary also had their seat count go up during their use of STV.
In fact adjusting seat counts to balance city and country is easier under STV than FPTP. Under FPTP, you need to re-draw boundaries to squeeze in another single-member district. Under STV, you just add one more member. If Winnipeg was under-represented, it was nothing to with PR but to do with a conscious government decision on the number of seats to give Winnipeg.
And I don't know why Jansen would mention gerrymandering. With a majority being required to elect a member in every seat, there is much less "accidental" splitting or concentrating of a party's votes to get unfair advantage. A majority of the voters elect the member in each district, not just a few percentage points to edge out the opponent, 45 percent of the vote versus 42 percent of the vote, for example, as happens under FPTP.
So adjustment of rural district boundary made little difference - especially with most rural districts abutting other rural districts, and generally speaking the one rural district and its neighbouring district both electing MLAs of the governing party (whatever it was at the time).
And gerrymandering had nothing to do with Winnipeg's STV for much of its time in use. Up to 1949, the whole city, as defined by its corporate limits, was one single district. There were no boundaries within the city that could have produced gerrymandering.
Macleod's article goes on to say
"An editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press on April 1, 1955, said multi-member constituencies were meant "to provide some of the advantages of proportional representation" but the results hadn't lived up to expectations.
"Differences between country and city have been heightened by different electoral systems, and the city's voice has been dissipated in a hodge podge of representation," the editorial said."
What a bizarre way to think of politics -- that a city -- with all the range of different sentiments held by its residents -- should elect only one kind of rep so as to not have the "city's voice" dissipated. (This is like the reasoning behind the state by state electoral college of the U.S.)
But what of all the voters who would not be represented by the one party that would be chosen to be the city's single voice? Having no voice, they would likely not only feel that their voice was "dissipated" but even outright ignored.
And under FPTP, Winnipeg does not hold a single belief - it does not speak with a "single voice." Even switching to FPTP did not have that effect.
In the last provincial election, Conservative, NDP-ers and Liberals were all elected to fill Winnipeg seats. FPTP does not ensure that Winnipeg speaks with a single voice, but only that its seats will be filled in an accidental, small district by small district winner-take-all basis, instead of a fair, proportional scheme based on city-wide popularity as under STV.
That the Free Press published that editorial there is no denying. But that it should be reprinted at all, or reprinted without comment seems a mistake. If nothing else, it shows how some use their newspaper to mislead voters and push personal or class agenda. And Macleod's article shows how sometimes media copy what other media pundits say, without critical thought.
And Macleod wrapped up his article by quoting Jensen saying: Anyone seeking to return to proportional representation would need to ensure the same system applies across the whole province "so you [don't] have people campaigning one way in rural areas one way in urban areas."
That in fact, was a big reason why Alberta and Manitoba used AV in rural areas. Although not able to use STV in the rural districts because of geographic considerations, the adoption of AV in rural areas meant rural voters used ranked ballots same as city voters in Edmonton and Calgary and Winnipeg. (Ironically in Winnipeg and Calgary where STV was used in provincial and city elections, voters had to be re-trained to use an X in the occasional federal election, the only FPTP election they would vote in.)
And to think that STV or other form of proportional representation is best brought in in one go, both in districts where voters want it and districts where voters do not want it, seems outlandish to me and un-democratic in its own way. (Though a government elected on a promise of pro-rep should feel it is its job to fulfill the promise.)
If we bring it in as it was brought in in the 1920s in Manitoba and Alberta, that is, partially in only one or two major cities, and it only last 30 years, I would still die happy. So if that is the worst we can expect from partial adoption of PR, it's not so bad. Let's go for it.
But who knows? Pro-rep may survive longer this time. The world has changed since the 1950s, and the 2050s will likely be even more different. Perhaps a switch to STV would be permanent, like other things once thought to be fads or reforms pursued only by cranks or troublemakers - such as the anti-slavery movement, laws prohibiting child-labour, secret voting, women's suffrage, Dr. Lister's belief that sickness is spread by things so small we can't even see them* -- things that are now considered wise and proper.
* In July of 1897, it was noted that “A leading drug journal recently treated editorially the whole practice of aseptic and antiseptic wound treatment as " ‘a fad, practiced by cranks.’ ” (online)
STV has the advantage over party-list pro-rep that it can be brought in just in particular parts of a province or country. That is an advantage.
We don't need to wait for a referendum and majority support across a province from Dawson Creek to Victoria, from Tofino to downtown Vancouver.
We don't need to wait for a referendum and majority support across Alberta - from the tarsands of McMurray to the cornfields of Taber, from the office towers of downtown Calgary to the hunting camps of Slave Lake.
If any place large enough to have multiple MLAs wants STV, we could bring it in just in that place.
If voters in Victoria want to switch to PR, which they do as was shown in the 2018 referendum, then why not bring it in just for that city through district-level STV?
Then perhaps it would spread to other places if it was a success. Or if it was a failure, at least the voters would have been listened to and given the chance to learn.
That would be a democratic way to do it.
Thanks for reading.
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