The practical benefits of fairer representation are sometimes difficult to find
We don't know why governments make the decision they do, and governments usually take all the credit they can, giving as little to the opposition whose election was made possible under fairer elections systems.
But the electoral benefits of Proportional Representation are easy to spot.
Under STV in Edmonton, a United Farmers MLA was elected in 1926 and 1930. Without STV, it is doubtful a Farmer candidate would have been elected in Edmonton.
This man was named to the government cabinet. This meant that Edmonton had representation in the cabinet, with probable but unknown positive effects for city residents, whether farmers or not.
The transferable vote also showed, as outside PR expert Hallett reported (as reprinted in my blog on the 1926 election*), that Lymburn's support was from supporters of all other parties. His ballots' second choices, consulted for transfer of his surplus, went to all the other parties, not just Labour as might have been expected. (If another UFA candidate had run, he or she might have received many of Lymburn's surplus through second preferences but as Lymburn was the only UFA candidate to run in Edmonton, the votes had to be transferred outside the UFA (or to the exhausted pile).)
STV thus provided a better polling of the voters than X voting under non-proportional FPTP elections does.
The 1926 election also saw the election of the first Labour MLA elected in Edmonton and his re-election in 1930, giving voice to the workers of the city. That was Lionel Gibbs. That result put an Edmonton representative in the caucus of Labour MLAs that served in the Legislature between 1926 and 1935.
STV in Edmonton in 1926 also elected two Conservatives and a Liberal, putting an Edmonton voice in those caucuses as well.
STV made it more difficult to evoke regionalism or pit a part of the province against another part, urban against rural, north against south, Calgary against Edmonton. It was made more difficult because each part (mostly) elected representatives to all four major parties. This is bound to be good, but its practical value cannot be measured easily.
Fairer representation under STV and AV meant that all-around great guy and much-respected local businessman and labourite Elmer Roper was elected at first in a 1942 by-election held using Alternative Voting, then re-elected several times under STV in Edmonton. His exposure at this level helped him be head-hunted by a group of concerned civic leaders in 1959 and then to be elected and serve as mayor 1959 to 1963. His political career had started when Edmonton public school board used STV for its election in 1926. He had then moved onto provincial politics being elected MLA first in a 1942 by-election held using Alternative Voting, then re-elected MLA in 1944, 1948 and 1952 in elections that used STV.
Would he have ever been given the post of mayor of Edmonton without his start under STV at two levels? We don't know, but it does not seem likely.
As for practical results of STV,
if we take Roper's re-election to the Legislature in 1944, 1948, 1952 as a result of STV,
then we can look at his career and credit STV with his achievements.
What did Roper do as MLA?
As an opposition (CCF) MLA in the Social Credit-dominated Legislature he had no direct powers but he did later state that he was at partially responsible for this:
when oil leases were being issued it was customary to grant leases over wide area, in which the oil company had monopoly right to drill in that area, Roper suggested in the Legislature that the government should retain the right to drill for oil in every second section in the leases. And awhile later the government did bring in a policy where the right to drill in every other township in a lease was retained. Roper said the policy brought billions of dollars into the government coffers over the ensuing decades.
(Revealing the uncompromising attitudes of governments under our present style of government, Premier Ernest Manning dropped STV in 1956. This was after Roper was not re-elected in 1955 (due to Liberal upsurge and SC and Conservative continuing strength). And although Roper ran again in the next election, he was not elected under FPTP -- and never again sat in the Legislature. Roper later said that STV was dropped to keep him from returning to the Legislature.
No CCF or NFP MLA was elected in Edmonton under FPTP until 1982, more than 20 years after the end of STV.
Under non-proportional FPTP, it would be 27 years before the next CCF or NDP MLA was elected in Edmonton. This pattern was produced despite 13 percent of city voters giving NDP candidates their votes in 1971. Edmonton had 16 seats in that election so the NDP was due two seats just in that election alone. But the NDP did not win any seats in Edmonton from 1955 until 1982.
Value of opposition MLAs keeping government true to the people
Under arch-conservative Premier Klein, protests at the Legislature slowed his government's move to privatize Alberta healthcare in 2000. But it was likely the presence of 18 opposition Liberal and 2 NDP MLAs in the Legislature, principally the two NDP MLAs, that pushed him to look at the uproar he was evoking and eventually to back down, In fact later in the legislature Klein pointed his finger and blamed the NDP MLAs for having made him back down.
The NDP MLAs were not elected under STV, but were elected in part due to concentration of NDP-ers in Edmonton strong enough to overcome the barrier to minority representation under FPTP.
But it shows how the presence of even two NDP MLAs can use persuasive powers to force a government to back down or at least swerve. The relevance being that it is known that minority MLAs will be more often elected under STV than under FPTP, still just to a minority of seats but even a few seats gives leverage.
=================================================
* the link to my blog on the 1926 election: https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/fair-from-the-start-first-election-of-edmonton-mlas-using-stv-1926
===============================================================
Comments