In 1948, MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary were elected through the Single Transferable Voting system, the so-called British system of proportional representation. In fact that system was used from 1924 to 1956 to elect MLAs in Alberta's largest cities with considerable ease and fairness.
The system works this way:
Candidates run in multiple-member districts, electing usually 3 to 7 members in a district.
Each voter casts a single vote but marks back-up preferences on the ballot.
The ballots in a district are counted and sorted. Some votes elect one or more candidates on account of specific support. The surplus votes not needed by the winners are transferred. Some go to candidates of the same party to further create proportionality of representation. Some go to candidates of other parties. These votes plus others transferred from eliminated low-ranking candidates are used to elect the best of the rest through formed consensus among the remaining voters.
The 1948 provincial election as conducted in Edmonton showed the twin workings of the STV system described above. One candidate was elected through first choice votes; the others through formed consensus. Altogether the five elected MLAs reflect the will of the voters, if not their first choice votes then the consensuses established through vote transfers according to the rankings marked on the mobile ballots.
These rankings were not necessarily along party lines but in accordance with the voter's own preferences based on whatever grounds he/she thought important.
With STV being a system of direct connection between voters and candidates, party identification did not even appear on the Returning Officer's general statement of STV elections. When lowest candidates are eliminated, votes are transferred by voters' secondary preferences. A glance at the record of transfers shows that on each transfer every surviving candidate received some votes whether of the same party or not, as many voters used criteria other than party identification to order their preferences.
Candidates that can amass enough votes are elected and there is nothing any other group can do about it. The amount required to be elected is set after the votes are counted.
47,276 votes were cast in this district, which covered all of Edmonton in 1948. 1126 votes were rejected. Marking an X was the cause of rejection in many cases. Ranking using numbers (or figures as the election regulation phrased it) was required although the voter did not have to rank more than one unless he/she desired.
This left 46,150 valid votes.
5 seats to be filled - five MLAs were elected to represent Edmonton in this election.
Quota 7692 (the number required to win a seat, until the last seats) 46150/(5+1) rounded up = 7692
The Social Credit party was in government at the time of this election, and Premier Ernest Manning was popular in Edmonton, his own district. Manning (SC) was elected on the first count by exceeding quota. SC candidates Adams and Heard got the lion's share of the transfer of Manning's 14,322 surplus, transferred in the Second Count.
The next several counts contained vote transfers resulting from the elimination of lowest-ranking candidates. Prowse (Liberal) was elected on the 8th count, by exceeding quota by collecting votes transferred to him from eliminated candidates.
Elmer Roper (CCF) was elected on the 10th count by accumulating 8684 votes. This was more than quota. His 1000-vote surplus was not transferred, through oversight or intentional slight. It may have made a difference in the final result.
Heard (SC) was elected on the 14th count by exceeding quota after the vote transfers of fellow SC-er Gillies, who was eliminated. There was just one seat still remaining to be filled and only two candidates in the running: Adams 7,559 votes, Page 4,883 votes. Heard's surplus was only 54 votes, not enough to make a difference. Page, being the lowest candidate, was eliminated and Adams won the seat with a partial quota, 7559 votes. Only one candidate won solely by first choice votes. The others won by being more generally popular than the other 11, as recorded by voters' preferences. In fact on the first count, Lazarowich was more popular than Heard and Adams but he was not popular enough to be elected and the other two were the secondary preferences of more voters than Lazarowich. Lazarowich fell behind and was eliminated on the 13th count.
This is not a failure of the system but its strength. If a voter cannot have his first choice elected, he/she is able to have the vote transferred to someone else, instead of being lost,which would happen in a system not using transferable votes. Under this category is the First past the post system which sees members elected often with less than a majority of the votes in their district.
Another system not using transferable votes is the Mixed Member Proportional, where if a voter cannot have their preference elected, the vote is wasted - this could happen if a voter votes for a party with less than a threshold of the vote. Some put this threshold as high as five percent. Thus easily in Canada three parties with about 3 percent of the vote each, instead of getting nine seats each, would have no seats, and more than 10 percent of the vote would be wasted right off the bat. This 10 percent of the vote could mean the difference between one party or another having a majority of the seats, if it is predominantly on the left or the right.
STV's consensus aspect assures that to be elected you must be the choice of about 17 percent of the voters (except at the end where sheer survival with whatever number of votes is the goal). If Edmonton had been split into five districts and the First past the post system put into effect, just having more votes in any district than the other candidates would have given victory. This could have been done with say 40 percent of the vote in a district containing only 20 percent of the electorate so about eight percent would have been enough in many cases to be elected. Unlike the 17 percent under STV, eight percent is a much lower "threshold" and one that does not require wide support formed through consensus to achieve victory.
Importance of consensus instead of proportionality
For many voters it is as important that either one of two parties is elected as that a particular party is elected. Say a NDP-er may be happier that either a NDP or a Liberal is elected and not a Conservative, than that a NDP is elected if it risks a Conservative coming to power.
That is sort of the nature of strategic voting, which is based on a voter guessing which party has the best chance and putting his or her vote there despite his natural inclination and true sentiment. STV eliminates strategic voting as it ensures to a large degree that if the NDP and Liberals for example have 17 percent of the vote they will elect one or the other by the end of the night and there is nothing any other group of voters can do about it. Strategic voting would still play a part in MMP as a voter not wanting to waste his or her vote on a party with expected support below the threshold would not vote for the party although it is the sentiment - and although the party may have exceeded the threshold if that voter and others had been more daring or confident or not listened to mass media and privately-commissioned slanted polls. Formed consensus in many cases is more important than strict proportionality.
In 1948, MLAs elected were members of three parties:
SC Manning, Heard and Adams,
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party (CCF) Roper,
Liberal Prowse,
roughly proportional to the first choice votes received by each party and certainly proportional to the formed consensus of the voters as shown by their ranked ballots. Very fair results.
Conservative voters gave their support to J. Percy Page but did not have the numbers to achieve quota and did not elect their candidate.
STV in Edmonton and Calgary elected five opposition MLAs in 1948. This was a fairer result than the single opposition elected in the two cities in 1959, after STV was cancelled.
Wasted votes
Some votes did not contribute to the election of a candidate despite the safeguards of STV. These were the 1126 rejected votes (2 percent of the whole), Page's 4883 votes and the 1894 “exhausted” votes recorded at the bottom. These votes did not have enough secondary preferences marked to allow all the transfers possible under STV. These 7903 wasted votes, 17 percent of the votes cast, compare well to the 49 to 70 percent commonly wasted under First past the post.
A copy of the Returning Officer's election results is available in from Provincial Archives of Alberta, info file “Politics - Election Statistics” or by contacting me - montotom@yahoo.ca
keywords: proportional representation, 1948 Alberta election, Edmonton politics, STV, electoral reform
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