1902: Prominent politicians and Catherine Helen Spence, one of the world's foremost STV champions, held what was described as a large and successful public meeting at Adelaide. Spence gave an overview of the history of the cause and mentioned Canadian STV activist Robert Tyson in her talk.
The Proportional Representation Review reported:
"A large public meeting was held in the Adelaide Town Hall in 1902 to consider the advisableness of applying the Hare-Spence system of direct voting to the present electoral districts.
Adelaide mayor L. Cohen, MP presided over the meeting. Messages of support were read out. One came from A. Deakin, acting prime minister of Australia.
A test election had been held. A five-member district was assumed, a list of candidate representing all shades of opinion was prepared, and ballot papers were circulated throughout the State and among the members of every political, social and literary organization. The election was conducted under the system provided for in a bill to be introduced in the Legislative Council the following week - the Effective Voting Bill, a bill providing for the use of pro-rep in all parliamentary elections in the State of South Australia.
7350 votes were collected by the time of the meeting. [The votes were counted at the meeting and winners declared elected.] One candidate won on the first count by surpassing the quota. [Quota was derived using the Droop quota.]"
The surplus having by the 'fractional' method been distributed, and the "minus" votes having been transferred to the subsequent choices of the voters, as indicated on their respective lists, the other four winners were found.
During the meeting portraits of leaders of the reform were thrown on a screen and Catherine Helen Spence introduced them to the audience.
The leaders so honoured included:
- Thomas Hare, the inventor of STV;
- John Stuart Mill, whom she described as "one of the grandest champions of liberty who ever lived;"
- Alfred Cridge of San Francisco "who saw in effective voting the one and only cure for the evils of political and municipal life in the U.S., the man who induced me at the age of 68 to make a pilgrimage through America on behalf of pro-rep and the man who said it was better to convert one woman than five men." (Laughter.)
Then followed the portrait of "Robert Tyson of Canada," whom she met on that "pilgrimage across America".
Followed by "Representative Deakin" (PM of Australia), "Sir Edward Braddon who introduced the system into Tasmania," and several others.
(Proportional Representation Review, Dec. 1902, p. 78)
=================================================
Who was "Robert Tyson of Canada"?
A man with a varied background:
A British immigrant. Lived in Toronto in early 1900s
A man with vision and energy --
Editor of the Proportional Representation Review magazine in 1903.
He likely had been active in the cause since the 1890s. He likely met the Australian STV campaigner Catherine Helen Spence at that time when she visited Canada. Spence herself applauded his work in 1902 at an Australian STV rally.
In 1903 he helped give the cause a higher profile in Canada when he moderated the election through STV of the executive of the Trades and Labour Congress. (Proportional Representation Review Dec. 1902, p. 78; Dec. 1903)
He served as secretary of the Canadian/U.S. Proportional Society League from 1904 to 1912. His enthusiasm helped push the movement through its so-called lean years, 1901-1912. In 1912, he wrote a series of articles for the Grain Growers Guide that helped launch a new wave of interest in STV.
By the time he died in 1917 at the age of 71, Calgary and five BC municipalities had adopted STV for their city elections.
He did not suffer fools gladly --
A diatribe he published in the Proportional Representation Review was aimed at well-known muckraker journalist Lincoln Steffens.
Steffens had described the herculean and self-sacrificing efforts of a volunteer committee of Chicago citizens to elect a progressive slate of representatives. Tyson says all that effort was "simply an endeavour to counteract the results of the foolish and vicious plan of election by single-member districts or by the Block Vote." Yet, Tyson bewailed, "Steffens manifests the usual indifference to real remedies" such as STV.
For the same reason he criticized Goldwin Smith, an opinion moulder in Canada at that time. Tyson wrote that Smith "constantly and most ably attacks the partisan party system of politics in Canada yet will not touch pro-rep - nor Direct Legislation - with a 10-foot pole, although these are the only methods by which the evils of the present party system could be abated."
He was a practical man --
Tyson wrote in 1904 that "The bane of pro-rep has been the complexities introduced by those who aim at an impossible and needless mathematical accuracy. In most actual STV elections the candidates who head the poll on the count of first choices are those ultimately elected...
Therefore the transfers are of secondary importance, and the essential point is the use of the single vote and multiple-member districts...The use of some plan of transfer is necessary as a safeguard, but when transfer is a minor feature, why place so much stress on the particular method and introduce endless complications? The common people object to submitting their ballots to a complicated system of counting that they cannot understand."
(Tyson, "Appendix" in Cridge, Proportional Representation (1904), p. 61-62)
At that time Tyson did not push a particular system, but in an article he wrote later he said that a form of Limited Voting - the single non-transferable system, the so-called Japanese system - was crude but effective at providing mixed representation roughly proportional to a parties' standings in a district. Under it, each voter casts a single non-transferable ballot in a multi-member district. Limited Voting is where each voter casts fewer vote(s) than the number of open seats. (GGG, August 7, 1912, p. 10)
(By the by, in almost all the actual STV elections in Alberta, one or two candidates did change from the first-count leaders as compared to the end result.
But transfers were not what produced most of the mixed, roughly-proportional representation elected in Edmonton elections.
This was seen as early as the first STV election of Edmonton MLAs. The representation elected in the 1926 Edmonton election was very different from the one-party sweep of Edmonton seats in 1921.
Most of this fairness was produced by 1926 election's use of the single vote cast in a multi-member district. Only a couple of the leaders changed through vote transfers conducted during the vote count.)
Transfers only added one new party to the mix, while nixing an independent candidate. The Independent candidate was among the leaders in the First Count but did not receive many transfers. Labour candidate Lionel Gibbs accumulated transfers, passed his vote tally and hung on until the end to be elected.
Transfers also achieved better proportionality by taking one seat from the Liberals and giving it to a Conservative. The Conservative candidates together received about half again more First-Count votes than the Liberal candidates taken together. The transfers allowed that total party support to come together and to be seen in the elected members.
The front runners were 1 Conservative, 1 UFA, 2 Liberals and 1 Independent-Liberal.
The successful candidates in the end were 2 Conservatives, 1 UFA, 1 Liberal and 1 Labour.
======================
===========================
Historical note:
Tasmania seems an outlandish land, but for a good while western Canada was grouped with it.
By 1926 STV was being used to elect legislators in four countries in the world:- Tasmania/Australia, - the Republic of Ireland, - Malta (then a British colony),
-- and western Canada (Alberta and Manitoba).
STV was no flash in the pan. All of the four, except for the Canadians, still use STV.
And even in Alberta and Manitoba, provincial elections used STV until 1955, for more than 30 years.
Alberta used STV to elect MLAs eight times.
Manitoba used STV in nine provincial elections.
Twenty Canadian cities and smaller municipalities used STV in a total of more than 150 elections. Calgary used STV in its city elections from the WWI era to 1961 and in 1971 Winnipeg used STV in its city elections from the WWI era to 1969.
It is time to bring STV back!
Thanks for reading. Check out my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.
=============================
What is STV?
From a 1902 reform magazine: "Thinking it well to have in every number something by way of a brief explanation of proportional voting, I repeat in this number the following. Proportional representation means the use of a reasonable and scientific system of voting instead of the present stupid, unfair and inefficient procedure. Methods: There are several systems by which the principle of proportional representation may be given effect to. Large electoral districts, each electing several members, are a necessary feature. The "quota" plan is usually employed. It means that a quota of the votes elects one representative. To arrive at the quota, the number of valid votes cast is divided by the number of seats to be filled. For instance in a seven-member district any one-seventh of the voters could elect one representative and the other six-sevenths could not interfere with their choice. The three principal systems of proportional representation are the Free List as used in Switzerland and Belgium [party-list pro-rep], the Hare system as used in Tasmania [STV], and the Gove System as advocated in Massachusetts. The Preferential Vote [Alternative Voting/Instant Run-off Voting] -- This is used in the election of single officers such as a mayor. It is not strictly a form of pro-rep but is akin thereto, and uses part of the same voting methods. The object of preferential voting is to encourage the free nomination of candidates and to obtain always a clear majority at one balloting, no matter how many candidates are nominated." (From the Proportional Representation Review Dec. 1902, p. 77)
(Hathi Trust online resource, page 81/180) ----------------------------------- This year: *Alberta is celebrating 150 years in Confederation 1870-2020 *100th Anniversary of STV first being used to elect legislators in Canada Winnipeg MLAs first elected through STV in 1920 ==========================================================
keyword: electoral reform, Alberta history, Manitoba history
====================================
Comments