Un-pen the voters -- Freeing voters to compose their own quotas - An innovative election system

Alberta voters would be allowed to separate from the district voters list and vote for any candidate running anywhere.

Their name would be put on separate voters' list. (no longer allowed to vote in the district)

still one person one vote. (voter can either vote in the district or vote as "freed" voter but not both)

if separated from the district, their vote would be pooled with other "freed" voters, and a quota (about the overall votes cast divided by the number of seats, but determined by dividing the number of freed votes by the preset number of seats in the freed vote pool) would be enough to elect the member.

Ranked votes would be used, so STV would be used for the freed vote pool.

Any group of freed votes equivalent to the quota would elect their member.

Secret voting is preserved as the votes in the freed pool are made up of diverse kinds of votes. no way to know how each voter voted.

Districts would then have fewer votes, but there was always much variation in voter turnout and the size of vote tally received by district winners, so it should not be a problem.

This is somewhat how Catherine Helen Spence's father as town clerk conducted an election in 1850 in Tasmania, but then the voter had to indicate which quota they were in, separate from the main vote. (no secrecy)

The "freed" voter system would free Conservative voters who may feel trapped in Edmonton districts and unable to elect a representative, and would also free up the NDP and Liberal voters in rural are where perhaps no NDP or Liberal has been elected for decades.

The members elected by the "freed" voters would be added to the Legislature. so more members, no change required in the district boundaries.

Currently about 100,000 Conservative voters in Edmonton do not have representation, and it may be assumed that they are not likely to form a plurality in any one district.

Almost all the NDP voters in districts outside Edmonton and Calgary currently do not have representation. But if they were "freed" up and able to move past the district boundaries, and join together in a multi-member at-large district, their thinly-spread voting numbers could be assembled into enough of a group to compose a quota and elect a member.

Such porous districts were envisioned in early PR proposals.

potentially voters could self-sort into occupational groups (as under Group government system), or for sure, compose unanimous constituencies, where member would naturally represent their sentiment.

Likely not all the votes cast by "freed " voters would elect someone

Voting is still secret so there can be no guarantees how others might vote, no guarantee that a candidate will compose a quota.

The voter would be taking a chance that his choice would have popularity to assemble quota, but the chance of the voter being effective in the freed voter pool is greater than when trapped in districts where the majority of votes consistently vote for a different choice.

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