Proportional representation does not have to be complicated. A system that uses single votes and multi-member districts creates mixed, roughly-proportional representation. No one group can take all the seats in a district. All substantial groups in the district have representation.
This applies to STV in particular but to all pro-rep systems in general.
STV creates - local representation (even if in larger districts than the current small single-member districts, but still at the city or county level) - proportional representation (at the district level), and - unequal voter-to-member ratio from district to district - if desired - to overcome how urban voters could overwhelm rural voters. There is no law saying all districts must be same size. A ratio of 7 urban voters to four rural voters was taken as a rule at one point in Manitoba history.
It is possible to have a seat in the Great North Land so large that it has the same number of voters as a riding in the middle of a major metropolis where people are packed together, living in high-rises. Or at least that is what is done in Alberta today (see footnote). Nor should a seat in downtown Toronto be made small enough for its population to equal a sparely-populated northern riding such as the NWT - I think most would not like to see Toronto given more seats than it already has just in the name of absolute voter equality. And anyways this 7 to 4 ratio, or even four to one, is nothing compared to the disparities created by the FPTP system. It took about 40,000 votes to elect a Liberal MP while it took 235,000 votes to elect an NDP MP in Alberta in the 2019 federal election. And this pales in comparison to the massive amount of votes wasted under FPTP. In every single district 40 percent to 65 percent of the vote is wasted. Thus in the 2019 federal election, 5.6M votes at least were wasted.
This waste happens despite the fact that many voters try to prevent their vote being wasted by casting their votes where it might have a chance instead of voting for the candidate they want elected (so-called strategic voting).
Our present system gives us results by midnight of election night. But they are fast-food-style results - quick to be delivered but short on quality. McElections if you will.
A third or more of our representatives are elected by a mere minority of the votes in the district, sometimes by as few as only a third of the votes.
The waste does not only decrease representation of opposition parties. It often prevents any representation at all of a small party. Even a party with 10 percent of the vote may be denied any representation at all under our present system.
While FPTP wastes up to 65 percent of the vote in a district, STV is proven to waste no more than 10 to 20 percent of the votes in any district that has five or six seats, a usual number under STV.
Under FPTP, the leading party always has far more representation than it is due. Not only is this true across the province in provincial elections or across the country in federal elections but also at the city level.
The artificial FPTP-created City-versus-Country jealousy
Under FPTP, the leading party in a city, for example takes all or most of the seats in a city or section of the rural lands. This spawns pigeon-holing generalizations about the voting sentiment of others. Such is the myth that all city-dwellers vote NDP or Liberal, and all rural folks vote Conservative.
The leading party in a city will take all or most of the seats in a city, far out of proportion to its vote share in the city.
The same holds true for the leading party - Conservatives - in a collection of rural seats.
Voting sentiment in the country thus appears to be far more different than that of a nearby city.
But this is not actually the case.
Many rural Conservative representatives win with only the support of a minority of the voters in their districts. Many city MPs and MLAs are elected with only a minority of the votes in their districts. But the perceived difference between city and country arouses fear of rural-urban disparity of representation.
If that city was made into a multi-member district, and if the rural districts were grouped into a multi-member district, and each voter given only a single vote (transferable or not), the representation elected in each would be far more similar (and much fairer) than under the present system.
Or if party-list pro-rep or MMP was adopted, the same would result.
Liberals, NDP and Conservatives would be elected in each place if they have substantial support in each place, which they usually have. The election would still mean something because the parties would be elected in due proportion to their vote share in the district. Instead of only one party being represented as under FPTP in far too many cases, three or four parties would be represented in each city as a matter of course under STV. Those are the reasons why FPTP fails us, while STV is flexible, fair and the best system for our future.
Thanks for reading.
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Footnote (April 2024):
Despite what many even political science professors apparently say, there is no great rural-urban disparity in Alberta today.
Certainly there are a couple small-population districts and there are many districts with between populations of 39,000 and 53,000. But the large-piopuaiton districts are not all urban and the small population districts are not all rural districts.
Thus the rural -urban disparity of representation is largely a myth.
(pop. figures for districts were stated in 2024, perhaps based on 2019 figures but relative to each other, districts likely have not changed much since 2019.)
Orange islands in a blue sea: Why Alberta's urban-rural political divide still exists
Timm Bruch
CTV News Calgary Video Journalist
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Published May 30, 2023 6:52 p.m. MDT
University of Athabasca professor Paul Kellogg
...
"Kellogg also believes some of the division stems back to political representation. Many urban voters in Alberta feel undervalued compared to their counterparts.
The population in some of the ridings in Calgary and Edmonton is almost twice as large as in some of the rural ridings.
"We need to find ways and mechanisms of better reflecting the multiplicity, because it's an increasingly diverse society we live in," Kellogg said."
but actually no riding has twice the population of another riding.
the closest a pair of districts that come close to that is LSL and Bonnyville Bonnyville is 1.93 percent of LSL
but both are rural ridings!
we look at the largest-pop. urban district and the smallest-pop. rural riding
and we see:
Calgary Falconbridge 52,688
Lesser Slave Lake 27,818 the least popl district in the province
Calgary Falconbridge is 189 percent of LSL. not twice the size, as Kellogg stated, although not far off.
but LSL and Central Peace, about the same small-pop. size, are exceptions:
only two ridings have less than 39,000 pop.
The smallest Calgary riding - Calg-North - has 39,000 (it is the third least-popl district in the province)
and there are 84 more districts that range up to 53,000 in pop.
the ratio between 39,000 and 52,688, the pop. of the largest urban riding, is 100 to 135, not 100 to 200 as it would be if the two districts were ratio of 1 to 2.
Two districts have more population than that - Bonnyville and Fort Saskatchewan - niether of them are in the two major cities, so at least notionally can be labelled as rural districts. Bonnyville and Fort Sask. - two "rural" districts - are the districts with the most pop. in the province - not two urbanized big-city districts, as the notion of rural-urban disparity would presume.
So it seems untrue to say some urban ridings are twice the size of some rural ridings,
- no rural riding is less than half the size of any urban riding.
And it is true that almost all ridings are within 35 percent of the size of the other - that is, give or take 7,000 pop. on base of 47,000.
You might make the case that some rural districts are smaller than some urban districts,
but it is just as equally true to say:
-all urban ridings are smaller than two or more rural ridings
-and that almost all rural districts are larger than one or more urban districts.
and also that some urban districts are larger than some rural districts
and some rural districts are larger than some urban districts.
and especially true to say two rural ridings are larger in pop. than any urban district.
and one urban district is smaller in pop. than all but two rural districts,
and two rural districts are larger in pop. than every other other district.
so in short, there is some disparity but it is not strictly urban versus rural:
some rural districts are larger in pop. than other rural districts;
some urban districts are larger in pop. than other urban districts
most urban districts are larger in pop. than some rural districts
most rural districts are larger in pop. than some urban districts.
The real disparity in our present voting system First Past The Post is that half the votes are used to elect someone and half the votes are not.
And that inefficiency and the deep-seated historical pattern that many districts have where it is known pretty much in advance whose vote will be ignored time and time again means that in some districts half the eligible voters stay home and don't bother.
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