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Tom Monto

What tells us representation in one place is proportional but representation elsewhere is not?

Updated: Jul 3, 2022

Many people bandy about the term "proportional representation."


But how can you tell representation is proportional or not?


Voters are of mixed sentiment. I don't mean one person saying one time that they like one party, another time that they like a different party. I mean some of the voters prefer one party and sort of like another, while other voters prefer a third party and sort of like a fourth party.


The idea of representation is that the greatest number of voters are able to elect someone that is like them or to elect someone they want to see elected - even if that person is not someone similar to them.


In Canada's electoral systems, votes are cast in districts.


Sometimes a majority of voters in a district prefer a single candidate (say one belonging to party A). In these cases, most are satisfied with the result when that person is elected. Only a minority are unsatisfied. This minority can be as large as 49.9 percent of voters. But even so such a situation is difficult to improve on.


In cases where only two candidates run, one or the other will take a majority of the vote. Except in the unlikely event of each candidate receives the same number. This did happen once in the old days on the Prairies and as regulations dictated, the winner was determined by the returning official. Thereafter the Member was known as the returning official's representative.


In the old, old days, only two candidates ran in each district in each election. These were representatives of the two "big-tent" parties: one representing conservative business interests; the other was of the reformist people-oriented brand - but also had considerable backing from businesses, different ones from those that supported the other party.


But since the earliest days of Canada, "third party" candidates and independent-minded candidates belonging to no party organization have also competed.


In these cases, often no one candidate takes a majority of the votes cast in a district.


Under the system we use now, the leading candidate is elected irrespective of the portion of votes he or she receives. When no candidate has a majority of the vote, and the leading one is elected anyway, the majority of voters are not represented by the elected member.


When many district elections result in this minority rule, a party may take a majority of the seats with only a minority of the overall vote. This kind of result is markedly unrepresentative - most of the people live under a government that they did not elect.


But in Canada's history this has been mostly the case - only in six elections has a majority of the voters elected the federal government.


And that is why we need to look at our district elections and consider ways to ensure that a majority of votes are represented in each district. Only in that way can we ensure that the government is more often elected by a majority of voters. And that a minority of voters do not take most of the seats, and thus have power over the majority.


Looking at a typical district, when no candidate in a district has a majority of the vote, and the leading one is elected anyway, the majority of voters are not represented by the elected member.


This is because each district elects just one member. If the district had two seats, the two leading candidates could be elected. In the typical district, the two leading candidates together get more than 65 percent of the vote. Election of both of them would ensure that the elected member represents a majority of the voters.


This would be a system where each voter casts only one vote in a multi-member district, a district that elects more than one. These are results based on the vote as cast in single-member districts that Canada uses now. In these single-member districts one candidate runs for each party. Thus, election of two would mean mixed representation, representation that reflects the mixed sentiment of the district voters.


Giving two seats to each current district would double the size of the legislature. But a different way to create a multi-member districts is to group existing districts and have them elect the same number of reps as now. Grouping districts that are small in size and very close in feeling to its neighbour evokes the lest resistance. Such is the case of city districts used in provincial and federal elections.


With a district having two seats, each major party may well run two candidates. And if its votes were numerous enough and the votes were spread to best advantage, that one party could take both the seats.


But with three, four or five seats in a district, the chance of a single party taking all the seats becomes much less.


Why is this important?


Because unless a single party has the support of a majority of the voters, it should not have all the seats.


Proportional representation in most cases means mixed representation.


But a system where the leading candidates get the seats is a pretty haphazard system. If one party had widespread support, depending on how the voters of a party spread their voters, several party candidates could be elected or none.


But a system where a set fraction of the voters is guaranteed a seat would be more certain of justice and fairness to all.


An easy rule wold be that with five seats in a district, a party that takes a fifth of the vote is due one seat; a party that takes three fifths is due three seats.


That is fair enough, but perhaps one party takes two-fifths of the votes and another two main parties each take a fifth of the vote and there are four other candidates each receiving about five percent of the vote.


The one party takes two seats, the other two main parties take a seat each, but then who would get the other one?


If the least popular candidate would be dropped off and his or her votes transferred to another, as many times as it takes, eventually one of the remaining candidates would fill the remaining seat by getting a fifth of the votes - or being the last still standing.


The use of transferable votes described here is a characteristic of the system known as Single Transferable Voting. STV was common in western Canada in the 1920s. Calgary used it in city elections from 1917 to 1961. It was also used by 19 other cities and partially by two provincial governments.


STV operated at the district level. STV district elections produced representation that was proportional.


What tells us it was proportional?

- The members elected in each district were mixed, belonging to different parties, reflecting the mixed sentiment of the voters.


- no one party took all the seats, reflecting how all the voters did not support one party.


- the parties with more support took more seats than the other parties.


- the members elected were elected by a large proportion of the voters. This is partially achieved by the use of transferable votes, where a voter did not see his or her most preferred candidate elected but would see one elected that was preferred over others.


- never did a party with less support take more seats than a more popular one.


Proportionality is measured by party votes compared to seats won. But the use of transferable votes means that it may not be exactly correct to judge the final result by the votes cast for first preferences. Because STV is based on districts, on voters and on individual candidates, parties do not play a part. The voter is at liberty to mark his descending preferences based on party lines or on neighbourhood residence, or gender, or any other criterion he or she wants.


Sometimes a final result varies a seat or two, party-wise, from the first preference votes cast. This is due to voters being at liberty to cross party lines with their lower preferences. But the fact that one was elected and not another means that the successful person was more popular. In the end, there is no calculation other than simple vote count comparison in determining who is elected.


To assess the number of Effective Votes, one can look at the votes and see the number used to elect someone, the amount of votes where at least one of the most preferred candidates marked thereon is elected, or the voters could be asked if someone you prefer is elected.


In Canada's historic STV elections, the chart of vote transfers tell us that 80 to 90 percent of the voters saw at last one of their marked preferences elected.


And by virtue of the system, these Effective Votes were used to elect a proportional result.


A typical grouped district in Canadian STV experience was a whole city, where all the MLAs in the city were elected in a single district and where each voter cast a single transferable vote. Each city elected a range of candidates, at least two, usually three, sometimes even four different parties, reflecting the mixed sentiment of the city voters in each case. A large proportion of the voters saw someone they have voted for elected.


Meanwhile under our current First Past the Post winner-take-all single-member district system, all the districts in a city sometimes elects just the candidates of one party. And the supporters of all the other parties are without representation. Often a majority of the voters are not represented at all. This is clearly not proportional.


Under any practical representational system, there will be some votes ignored. But one where a majority are ignored is basically undemocratic.


Systems that use many many districts, such as those that use single-member districts, waste more votes than those that use fewer - multi-member - districts.


And the fewest yet are those that use no districts but instead elect at-large. At-large elections are common at the city level, but they seem impractical in Canada at the provincial level or country-wide. Individual candidates could not run coast to coast so at-large elections would have to be party-based. Widespread distaste against powerful "party machines" means that a system based on parties would be unsavoury to many.


So multi-member districts and transferable votes -- voter-driven, candidate-based STV elections -- seem the best route to Proportional Representation today. If desired, as well, supplemental top-up seats based on party standings could be used in a so-called Mixed Member Proportional system.


Thanks for reading.

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PR where proportionality is based on party tallies is the usual sense of the word PR.


other indexes of proportionality (gender, race, age, place of residence/local representation ) are not as much discussed.

But some balance in this regard is produced by PR, for PR depends on most votes being used to elect someone,

so if voters vote in diverse way, it is reflected in results, even if not noted in P analysis.


party-proportional representation (the usual form of PR) depends on having parties, I think.

and any party-list PR system depends on having parties.


any system where voters vote directly for candidates, such as STV, does not need parties.


for that reason, STV can be used in non-government settings.


but usually its proportionality is measured by comparing it to party tallies.


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