Timeline of Electoral Reform part 2 1920-1971 Proportional Representation, STV, List PR, PR books
- Tom Monto
- 2 days ago
- 14 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
Part 2 1920-1971
(for links to parts 1 and 3, see bottom of blog)
1919-1920 - United Kingdom/Ireland
Ireland, at the time a part of the United Kingdom, adopted STV for local elections.
1919 Sligo city election used STV. First borough in UK to use STV. Three 8-seat wards.
Whole-vote "exact method" used for transfer of surplus votes (see footnote).
Protestant-Catholic troubles, labour tension, borough in deep financial straits. Members of three parties (Ratepayers, Sinn Fein, Labour) plus Independents elected.
80 percent voter turnout. newspaper hailed election as "absolutely fair."
(Sligo election was so successful that STV was prescribed for all cities, towns and other municipalities in Ireland.
1920 - On Jan. 15, 1920, more than 200 government bodies in Ireland were elected by STV.
(likely the "Exact method" was used to transfer surplus votes.) (Hoag and Hallet, PR (1926), p. 237)
The 15 January urban elections saw Sinn Féin, Labour, and other nationalists winning control of 172 of Ireland's 206 borough and urban district councils.
Many seats were taken by acclamation.
Elections held In rural areas on June 12 -- Sinn Féin took control of 338 out of 393 local government bodies, county councils, boards of guardians and rural district councils.
The county and rural district elections saw virtually no contests outside of Ulster.
Sinn Féin got control of virtually every county council and rural district council outside of Ulster. Sinn Féin success extended even to Ulster, with the party winning control of 36 of Ulster's 55 rural districts.
(an example is Antrim County -- 21 councillors; it was divided into four districts electing 3 to 6 members each.
Another example: Dublin - 80 councillors; ten borough electoral areas with DM ranging from 6 to 10. Two in each ward were designated as aldermen. Quotas ranged from 500 to 800 in the different wards.
(At first it was intended to hold the next municipal elections in 1923 but no elections were held until 1925 due to the Troubles.)
Irish Free State was covered by 26 of the traditional counties of Ireland, which included 27 administrative counties and four county boroughs.
The use of STV for Irish local elections carries on today, and today Ireland has 31 local authorities, termed County, City, or City and County Councils and Ireland is divided into 166 LEAs, with an average population of 28,700 and average area of 423 square kilometres. DM ranges from 4 to 7. A council may be composed of members from 5 to 10 or more wards. (see Wikipedia "Local electoral area")
1920
1920 Iceland adopted partial PR in both houses, list PR. (PR partially used as of 1915)
Lower house - In Reykjavik district, four members elected by D'Hondt, others by FPTP or BV in 1 or 2-member districts.
Upper house (14 members in total) - six members elected by d'Hondt nationwide.
(revised in 1934 -- Reykjavik district given 6 seats. 22 district seats, 11 country-wide compensatory seats.)
Iceland's later use of PR:
1942, use of PR in lower house extended. Reykjavik district given 8 seats. PR maintained in Reykjavik. PR extended to two new six-member constituencies (Southern and ?). 35 members in lower house: ? district seats, ? country-wide compensatory seats.
1959, PR extended all across country, list PR in MMDs of 8 to 13 seats each. Reykjavik district given 12 seats. ? district seats, ? country-wide compensatory seats.
1987 Reykjavik district given 13 seats (soon increased to 15 seats). ? district seats, ? country-wide compensatory seats.
switched to STV At-large STV-25 district used in 2010)
1920 Denmark adopted mixed member proportional with multi-member districts. (Unlike previous system no single-member districts were used.)
135 district seats allocated to districts based on population, voters on list and area. District seats filled by list PR.
40 top-up seats.
2 percent electoral threshold (or winning at least one district seat or an equivalent portion of vote in two of the three electoral provinces). Seats allocated to parties that have qualified for participation in this allocation in strict proportionality to the number of votes obtained by these parties. The calculation is done on the basis of the so-called pure Hare quota; seats not allocated by the full quota are allocated on the basis of largest remainders. This is said to give the closest possible approximation to full proportionality. The party seat counts are then compared to district seats already won and top-up seats are allocated as necessary to bring party's seats count up to the calculated amount, as possible.
2007 -- district DM ranged from 10 to 21, plus Bornholm with 2 members. (see 1915) (https://elections.im.dk/media/15737/parliamentary-system-dk.pdf)
1920 Jugo-Slavia - National Constituent Assembly adopted PR. (National Assembly (unicameral) adopted PR in 1921)
1920 Estonia - National Assembly (unicameral) adopted PR in 1920 (Local government elections also used PR)
1920 India -- STV was used on experimental basis to elect three members of the Legislative Assembly of India for the European constituency of Bengal. As well, STV was used to elect four members of the Council of State for non-Mohammedan constituency of Madras, and four members of he Legislative Council of Bengal for the European constituency of Bengal. (Gandhi announced that he favoured the use of PR for election of delegates to the All-India Congress.) (Hoag and Hallett (1926), p. 258)
(1920 Manitoba -- adoption of STV in Winnipeg city elections. in use at city level until 1970. DM-3 -- 6 members in each district. half of members elected each election (staggered terms). Casual vacancies filled by byelection (held at time of next election). The whole-vote "exact method" used for transfer of surplus votes. (see footnote))
(Winnipeg had 179,000 residents at this point in time.)
(1920 Manitoba -- adoption of STV to elect Winnipeg MLAs.
STV used at provincial level to 1954, with two different districting schemes:
-- 1920 to 1949 -- DM-10 in Winnipeg city-wide district. (largest DM used to elect legislators using STV in the world up to that time). Optional-preferential voting. Whole-vote "exact method" used for transfers of surplus votes (see footnote).
-- 1949, 1953 -- Winnipeg used three districts DM 4.
1954 end of provincial PR in Manitoba -- seats in Winnipeg area increased by four, system changed to single-member districts and FPTP. (AV used in rural districts 1923-1954)
(1920, 1922, 1925 Australia -- New South Wales used STV to elect Legislative Assembly. DM ranged from 3 to 5. 24 districts, 15 having 3 members and nine having five members. (In 1927 STV replaced with IRV; MMDs with SMDs.)
1921
1921 Malta adopted STV. all districts elected five members. Optional-preferential voting. Whole-vote "exact method" used for transfers of surplus votes (see footnote). STV has been used there ever since.
(most recent election see https://electoral.gov.mt/ElectionResults/General )
(1921 Britain -- Northern Ireland adopted STV-PR by order of the British government. it was used in 1921 (the first election to the Parliament of Northern Ireland) and for the 1925 election -- Ten districts each electing between 4 and 8 members. Droop quota.
NI dropped STV in 1923 and prior to the 1929 election.
(PR adopted widely again for election of the NI Assembly in 1998.)
(see Pringle "A Case Study of Northern Ireland in the 1920s" online)
(see Lakeman and Lambert, Voting in Democracies (1959), p. 218-224)
(1921 U.S. -- Cleveland, a city of 800,000, adopted STV to elect city councillors.
25 members were elected in four districts - two had seven, one six, one five members.
Districts had different number of members as they were unequal in population - the prime objective in laying out the districts was to have districts of social and economic homogeneity, not equality of population. (Maxey, "Cleveland Election and the New Charter," American Pol. Science Review, Feb 1922. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1943890?seq=2)
Cleveland was first large city in North America to use STV.
see Amy Barber's book P.R. and Election Reform in Ohio
1921 -- Belgium provincial councils elected through STV starting in 1921.
1922 Ireland adopted PR (STV) for election of members both in the lower house and upper house.
Lower house - DM ranged from 3 to 9. Whole-vote "exact method" used for transfers of surplus votes. Optional-preferential voting.
(In 1923, Ireland's 28 electoral districts had DM ranging from three to nine. In 1935, its 34 electoral districts had DM ranging from three to seven. Since 1947, during which time the number of electoral districts has increased from 40 to 42, DMs have narrowed further, ranging from three to five.
Since 1997, legislation has mandated DM of 3, 4, or 5.)
Upper house (Senate) election used STV in 1925. (Gregory method used) see 1925.
(see
(see footnote)
1922 Latvia - National Assembly (unicameral ) elected through PR
1922 Lithuania - National Assembly (unicameral ) elected through PR
1923 - STV was dropped for Northern Ireland city elections.
(1923 Edmonton adopted STV for city elections. STV in use until 1927. City-wide at-large. Annual elections, so any casual vacancies filled in next election. Two-year terms, staggered terms, half of councillors up for election each year. DM varied from five to seven. Whole-vote "exact method" used for transfer of surplus votes.)
(1924 Alberta -- adoption of STV to elect provincial members in Edmonton, Calgary and Medicine Hat. city-wide districts - Edmonton and Calgary each with 5 members, M.H. 2 members. (These MMDs were in existence prior to STV being adopted.) Optional-preferential voting. Droop quota. Whole-vote "exact method" used for transfers of surplus votes (see footnote).
(before the next election in 1930, M.H. divided into two single-member districts.
Later Edmonton and Calgary DM increased to 6 seats, back to 5, up to 6 again, then Edmonton up to 7. (STV dropped in 1956, replaced by single-member districts and FPTP.)
In almost all the STV elections in Edmonton and Calgary, 3 or 4 parties were represented among each city's MLAs.
1926 Edmonton: four parties represented among the city's MLAs.
Winning candidates received 15,000 votes, 82 percent of the 18,000 valid votes.
Overall, 8501, 57 percent of the winning candidates' vote totals, were made up of first preferences.
Overall, at least 11,200, at least 75 percent of the winning candidates' vote totals, were made up of first and second preferences.
1925
1925 Chile -- PR adopted because, unlike previously-used Cumulative Voting, list PR system introduced incentives for candidates of the same party to work together, and by seeking their own benefit, the candidates benefited the party. Claro Solar said that a PR system à la d’Hondt would permit the most “exact representation … of all the opinions dividing the electoral body strongly enough to be taken into account and contribute to the progression of the State”. DM ranged from 2 to 18.
open-list PR at district level -- Each list might contain as many candidates as there were seats to fill. The system used cédula particular, there being no ballot containing all the candidates, so that each candidate, party, or electoral pact prepared his, her, or its own ballots. If no candidate was marked, then vote taken as vote for the list. Votes for candidates of each party were totalled and divided by 1, 2, 3, etc. to get number of seats for each party in district.
(previously DM varied from 1 to 13, mostly 2 or 3. Voting was by Cumulative Voting. The Chilean Cumulative Voting system worked as follows: each voter had as many votes as there were seats to be filled in the district. Voter could give all the votes to a single candidate or distribute them differently. (Article 77, Law 2.883).
Candidates with the most individual votes were elected --in a 3-seat district, the three with the largest number of votes were elected.)
PR In use until 1973 military coup. (see 2015) (see Gamboa and Morales, "Deciding on an Electoral System", online Cambridge Univ. Press)
1925 Ireland -- STV was used to to elect 19 members of the Seanad (Senate). The largest DM used with STV until 1991 (NSW). Droop quota. Optional-preferential voting.
315,000 valid votes. About 260,000 of the 305,000 votes cast were used in the end to elect the 19 winners, an 85 percent rate of effective votes. Only 12 percent of valid votes were found to be exhausted. Thirteen were elected at the end, when the field of candidates had been thinned to the number of remaining open seats in the 65th Count.
(Later, the 26-member NI upper house (Senate) consisted of 24 members elected by STV by members of the NI House of Commons, along with two ex-officio members, the Mayor of Londonderry Corporation and the Lord Mayor of Belfast Corporation.)
Harold F. Gosnell, "An Irish Free State Senate Election," The American Political Science Review, Feb., 1926, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Feb., 1926), pp. 117-120 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1945103.pdf
(1925 U.S. -- Cincinnati used STV for city election. Would use STV to 1955 (16 elections).
(formerly Cincinnati had had 32 councillors, 26 elected in SMDs, 6 elected at-large through block voting).
STV system - 9 councillors elected at-large.
Surplus votes transferred by the "Cincinnati" method - votes held by a winning candidate were numbered sequentially, and multiples of digit transferred, based on the mathematical relationship between the surplus and the total votes.
Cincinnati voters voted to retain STV in 1936, 1939, 1947 and 1954.
1957 they voted to drop STV. (STV replaced by at-large block voting). (see 1988)
see Barber's book P.R. and Election Reform in Ohio
(This Timeline also lists adoption of STV in New York City and Cambridge (Mass.). Otherwise for info. on adoption of city-level STV in the U.S., refer to Montopedia blog "U.S. cities ... )
1926 Greece -- Chamber of Deputies elected through PR
1926 South-West Africa - STV used for members of executive committee of the Legislative Assembly. ("Growing Demand for Electoral Reform" (PR League, 1927))
(1927 Round-up of PR at the time reported in 1927 publication "Growing Demand for Electoral Reform" (PR League, 1927). See Montopedia blog "Old Books on PR and STV")
1929 - STV was dropped prior to the 1929 election of the NI House of Commons.
replaced by single-member districts and FPTP. Lakeman and Lambert, Voting in Democracies (1959) said the results of the cancellation of STV are mostly unknown, but it "has certainly tended to embitter relations between Unionists and Nationalists." (p. 222)
The university constituency of Queen's University Belfast continued to use STV to return four members of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, until 1969.) (STV adopted again in 1998.)
(1933 Australia -- New South Wales Legislative Council is elected by members of the Legislative Assembly and of the Legislative Council, using STV. Such indirect election method used until 1978. In 1978, change made to directly elect the Leg. Council using STV in a state-wide district, one third of the seats being up for election each three years)
(1937 U.S. -- New York City adopted STV in city elections. PR in use until 1945, total of five elections. Uniform quota used for quota and also to allocate seats per district (borough). Each borough was entitled to one member of the council for each 75,000 votes cast, and an additional member if remainder was greater than 50,000. Overall council size and borough representation varied according to voter turnout -- in 1937, Brooklyn was given nine seats, Manhattan six, Queens and The Bronx five each, and Richmond one.)
With population of 4.5M, NYC was the largest place to have STV at the time.)
(1939 Canada -- Saskatoon -- Alone of Canadian cities that used STV, Saskatoon adopted STV a second time. Kept it to 1942. )
(1940 U.S. -- Cambridge Mass. adopted STV for city elections. Still in use today.
Uses random method for transfer of surplus votes (the Cincinnati method).
9 elected. Droop quota.
2023 election results:
see Montopedia blog: https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/pr-in-cambridge-mass-a-case-of-city-level-stv
1942 Iceland -- use of PR in Iceland's lower house extended. (see 1920)
after WWII -- countries that were reborn after the end of German occupation often adopted PR -
Austria -- 1945 PR re-adopted (see 1918)
Denmark -- (elections never stopped under Nazi occupation)
Norway -- open-list PR in MMDs. 1945 150 members, DM ranged from 3 to 8.
2021 169 members in total. 19 MMDs (counties) DM ranged from 4 to 19.
One member in each district is levelling seat, allocated to parties in compensatory
method.
France -- used PR 1945-1958 and in 1986.
Netherlands -- began to hold elections again in 1946. had had PR since 1917.
Belgium, Poland and many more
(Yugoslavia had adopted PR in 1992)
1945 Gibraltar city election using Limited Voting - each voter had four votes in contest electing seven members. Most-popular party ran seven candidates and elected them all. Subsequent city elections aroused no great interest. (Gibraltar adopted STV for Legislative Council in 1950.) (Lakeman and Lambert, Voting in Democracies (1959), p. 77-78; 217-8)
1948 Australia adopted STV for election of members of the federal Senate, first used in 1949 election. Seven were elected to each state. (later DM became 2 or 6 to 12.)
(multi-member districts (whole states and territories used as districts). Gregory method of surplus transfers. Droop quota. Casual vacancies filled by state parliament selecting someone from same party. (1989 Ticket Voting added to ballots.)
For a valid below-the-line vote, the Senate PR-STV system - without any good public interest reason - required nearly all preferences to be marked, prior to 2016.
In the 2013 election of six Senators for New South Wales, a record 110 candidates stood, requiring - quite unreasonably - a below-the-line voter to correctly mark 99 preferences for his or her ballot to be valid. (Farrell and McAllister, p. 42, 60)
Australia's Senate is said to be the largest-scale use of STV in the world. In 2022 15M votes were cast, electing 40 Senators. DM ranges from 6 to 12, except ACT and Northern Territory, which have 2 seats each).
1948 Israel adopted PR shortly after founding of country. List PR, at-large (country-wide district) but with electoral threshold.
(only Netherlands, Israel and Paraguay use at-large districting.)
Italy, Japan, West Germany adopted democratic PR after WWII1946 Italy adopted MMP. 31 districts, most electing between 4 and 34, one 1-seat district. Open-list list PR in districts. 476 elected in districts, 80 elected as levelling seats. (First national election in Italy where women could vote - and run for office - Lina Merlin was elected.) Italy's PR had a very low barrier to entry – low electoral threshold; any party with 300,000 votes nationwide was entitled to seats. Parties with even fewer votes could get seats if their support was regionally concentrated.
1947 Japan adopted SNTV (semi-proportional) and then partial-PR parallel system in 1996.
1949 West Germany adopted MMP (first election in 1949).
The British Zone of occupied Germany adopted MMP under the name (in German) “Personalized Proportional Representation.”
The improved two-vote version came into use in 1953. made the system more personalized. You could vote for the local candidate you wanted, without hurting the party you preferred.
(revised in 2023 to prevent overhang)
(For more info, see
1950 - Gibraltar began to use STV to elect five members of the Legislative Council. Women given the vote. 1.5 percent spoiled votes. Very noticeable difference in vote tallies for candiate of the same party. (Lakeman and Lambert, Voting in Democracies (1959), p. 77-78; 217-8)
1951 France added apparentment to its PR system, whereby parties could join their votes together to take additional seats.
(1955/1956
Manitoba and Alberta dropped their partial use of PR at provincial level. Reverted to FPTP in single-member districts.)
1959 Iceland's use of PR extended all across country, (see 1920, 1942)
(1960 Cork Corporation election, 29 June, elected all 21 seats on City Council. One of largest DM used with STV. 22,000 valid votes. 72 candidates. The count began on 30 June and concluded in the early hours of 3 July after 63 counts. Initially-lower-placing candidate in 38th place moved up to take a seat. (This was the last time the entire Cork County Borough was a district. 1967 replaced by six districts, DM being 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6.)
see Wiki: 1960 Cork Corporation Election and
1960s -- Third World -- Some countries adopted PR when getting Independence in 1960s
Africa, Latin America and Asia.
(parallel voting systems and exotic varieties of PR sometimes adopted)
As Pilon has pointed out, newly-independent countries, if they are able to get clean start at time of founding of the new country, do not adopt FPTP.
Instead, for purposes of stability (and fairness), they go with PR.
Parallel systems (FPTP with list PR):
Africa
date ? Guinea
Senegal
Tanzania
(1970 U.S. -- New York community school boards adopted STV. STV used until 2000. (Pilon, Politics of Voting, p. 130))
1971 Canada -- Calgary held its last city election where STV was used.
This was last time STV was used in Canada to elect government members.
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"Timeline of electoral reform" part 3 has events that have occurred since 1971
Footnotes:
1897 Tasmania election Newman Hare-Clark in Tasmania, p. 9 leads one to think that the the 1897 Tasmania election used a form of Gregory but Humphreys (p. 141-2) is quite clear it was the Exact Method.
Inclusive Gregory Method -- All of the candidate's votes were transferred as fractional votes, the transfer value to be derived by ratio of surplus votes to total votes held by the candidate. Such procedure guaranteed proportional transfer as to next usable preference and also as to all back-up preferences marked on the ballot. It seems if any Gregory was used, that Hare-Clark of used only Gregory method (using just last parcel) and not the Inclusive Gregory method.
1919 item: "Hare system remedy for boss rule" (1922)
for other footnotes, go to part 3 of the "Timeline of electoral reform" blog series
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See Montopedia 3-part blog on "Canadian electoral reform".
This has information on progress toward P.R. in the U.S. and Canada.
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see also
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further reading
Belgium's adoption of PR:
Ireland's adoption of PR:
Netherland's adoption of PR:
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