When English-speaking people in the old days talked of proportional representation, they were not referring to party-list P-R, but instead to Single Transferable Voting (STV). STV is an electoral system that is voter-driven and candidate-based. STV provides representation that is only roughly proportional by party but ensures that the most-widely popular individual candidates are elected.
STV is based on multi-member districts and voters casting only one vote but providing back-up preferences to provide fairness and reduce waste. These innovations used together ensure the achievement of the tenets of democratic representation.
They ensure that any substantial group in a district will elect candidates to fill its due proportion of the seats, so will be heard. Groups do not take much more than their due share so no voting block with less than a majority of the district vote can take a majority of the seats in any district.
A high proportion of the votes have some influence on who is elected. This ensures that overall in a district a high proportion of the voters are represented by the elected representation. Almost every voter in a district can find someone he or she supports among the people elected in the district.
The electoral system we currently use, First Past The Post (FPTP), breaks down the electorate into a large number of separate contests. This produces inequalities at the level of the district and the "region," and at the overall level (as outlined in other recent blog).
Under STV, districts are larger than under single-member districts, so voting blocks are not as often divided by arbitrary district boundaries. A district under STV generally elects 4 to 7 seats, but ten-seat districts are not unknown. With each voter casting only one vote, no single group can capture all the seats in a district. That is, no single voting block can capture all the seats unless it has an unrealistic 80 or more percent of the vote in a district. To win under STV, a candidate must exceed a threshold, a minimum required to win a seat. This is calculated by dividing the total votes cast by the number of candidates plus one. Any candidate who has at least that number of votes is declared elected.
Under STV, when a voter casts a vote, he or she writes a number 1 beside the first choice, 2 beside the second choice, and so on, until they had marked their preferences for as many candidates as they want to.
In the first round of counting of the votes cast in an STV election, the “1” votes for each candidate are counted. It can be seen that a variety of parties are represented in the leading candidates. This mixed group of front-leaders is produced by the very existence of a multiple-member district with each voter casting only one vote.
Often one or two candidates exceed the threshold on the first count. They are immediately declared elected. The number varies -- sometimes none exceed the threshold on the first count; sometimes more than two do. The rest of the seats are filled by candidates who accumulate votes through transfers from other candidates.
Most or all of the mixed group of leaders are likely to be elected, but they are not assured of election -- their leading position comes under question as the vote counts are adjusted through vote transfers conducted as part of the vote-counting process.
For one of the remaining candidates to be elected to fill one of the remaining open seats, the candidate must be popular enough not to be eliminated and must accumulate enough votes through vote transfers to exceed the quota. Leaders, if they are to retain their spots and eventually take a seat, must prove their general popularity by receiving at least some of the votes transferred. They cannot simply rely on their initial supporters.
As the vote count progresses, often a candidate with an accumulation of votes added from a variety of other candidates, expressive of wide popularity, will exceed threshold and be elected, while another candidate, say "Terry," who does not accumulate many transferred votes will not be elected. This may happen even if "Terry" was popular and a front leader in the first count. Wide popularity, not just support from a single group, is often the determinant of successful candidates. This mechanism ensures that relatively few votes are totally ignored - that a high proportion play a role in the election. The transfers funnel votes into the most widely popular of the remaining candidates.
The vote transfers arise in two ways: when someone is elected or when the least-popular candidates are eliminated. Voters were at liberty to mark their back-up preferences in whatever fashion they wanted, based on party lines or any other factor they thought important. These preferences are used to transfer votes between candidates.
Votes are transferred in the next count after someone is elected by exceeding the threshold. All votes above the threshold are surplus because they are not needed to elect that candidate. Instead of being wasted as they are under FPTP, under STV the surplus votes are given to other candidates based on the back-up preferences marked by the voter. They are transferred in the same ratio as they stand in the make-up of all of the candidate's votes.
If no transfer of surplus votes is required, vote transfers are produced by the elimination of the least-popular candidate. After the elimination, each of the candidate's votes are transferred based on back-up preferences marked on the ballots.
If a vote is to be transferred but the voter did not mark enough back-up preferences, or the only back-up preferences marked are for candidates already eliminated or elected, it is declared "exhausted" and put on a separate pile. These are about the only votes ignored under STV. And even then some of the voters whose votes are here have had a preferred candidate elected to represent their opinion in the legislature.
These elections and eliminations gradually reduce the number of candidates in the field, while the transfers allow the back-up preferences on the remaining ballots to be used to form consensuses behind the most popular of the remaining candidates until all the seats are filled.
As the process moves along, if it happens that there are only as many remaining candidates as there are remaining open seats, the candidates are declared elected even though they do not have quota.
The STV process achieves democratic representation in several ways:
Any voting block assembled across the large districts elects representative(s) if it can draw on a number of voters larger than the threshold.
Any voting block in one small part of a district elects representative(s) if it can draw on a number of voters larger than the threshold.
In each district, all substantial groups have due share of representation. A majority of voters captures a majority of the seats.
No group takes all the seats, so all substantial groups are represented.
STV used across many districts means that a party with a majority of the votes will take a majority of the seats, hold government and have the power to make decisions. But at the same time any substantial groups will have their due share of seats and be heard.
Thus, STV ensures mixed representation, roughly proportional to popularity. It also ensures that votes will vote truly to their sentiment, not just for one of the two candidates most likely to be elected. By establishing formed consensuses, it ensures that voters of two like-minded voting blocks can work together to elect someone amenable to both, instead of their vote being split and rendered useless.
STV, or proportional representation as it was loosely called at the time, was used to elect MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary from 1924 to 1956. It was also used to elect city councillors in Calgary from 1917 to 1974, in Winnipeg from 1920 to 1955, in Edmonton in the 1920s and in 16 other western Canadian municipalities.
Wherever STV is used, it proves itself a fair and compassionate electoral system, a system well suited to a fairer and more compassionate future.
Thanks for reading.
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[An alternative title for this piece was "STV - explained and defended"]
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