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Tom Monto

"When Farmers Changed Voting" 1921 Alberta

An article on Alberta's historic electoral reform published in most recent Alberta Views is surprising to me. ("When Farmers Changed Voting". June 2021)

For an article complimenting the UFA, it is hard on them and easy on the Liberal government, and easy on the SC government that returned Alberta to the non-proportional First past the post system we have today! And it presents STV and AV in an un-inviting light.


For one thing, it says "Pressured by the farmers, the Liberal government promised electoral reform but the entry of the UFA into partisan politics swept the Liberals out of power before they could act."

Nice try but no, the Liberals had been in power for 16 years. How many years does it take to make the change? Well, the UFA proved it could be done in three years, as that is how long it took the UFA to not only start up a government, take over the reins from the Liberals and to change the electoral system. Just three years.


And it seems that the Liberal premier never admitted to making such a promise. Only through taking over the government did the farmers get the reform they wanted. For all we know, the Liberals never would have done it, no matter how many years it was in power. The article says "the UFA introduced legislation that abolished the plurality electoral system and replaced it with a mixed system".


But it goes on to make a historic mistake: "Edmonton and Calgary were both made multi-member districts that elected MLAs using the single transferable vote (STV)." But already before the 1921 election the two cities had been made into multi-member districts. This change was made by the Liberal government although it did not go the step farther that farmers were demanding, of bringing in PR-STV.


The UFA did make the simple next step -- to restrict each voter to casting just one vote, a transferable preferential vote. The combination of multi-member districts and Single Voting was a simple but effective way to produce mixed representation that reflect the varied sentiment of voters of each city. In its brief description of the working of STV, the article states "The STV system required voters to rank candidates in order of preference." Better to say that voters marked their first preference and also back-up preferences. Only one preference marked by each votes is to be used, All rankings below the one that helped elect someone were disregarded. Voters were allowed to mark just the most-preferred candidate, so is marking just one choice really ranking candidates?

Article says "A quota was calculated based on the total number of ballots cast." But better to say that quota was calculated based on the number of votes cast. It is less wordy. Actually clearer still to say quota was derived by dividing the number of votes cast by the number of seats to be filled. [Not quite accurate but really the formula for deriving quota was almost as simple as that.]

The article is clear to say any candidate earning more votes than the quota was declared elected. And that any votes earned by a candidate above the quota needed (surplus) were redistributed according to the second preferences indicated on them. Then the STV process works like this - to fill any remaining seats, the candidates with the fewest votes were eliminated, one by one, and their votes were distributed according to the next preference marked by voters. The process of redistributing surplus votes and those of eliminated candidates is continued until all the seats were filled - or until there were only as many candidates remaining as there were open seats to be filled. The UFA government brought in STV in Edmonton and Calgary, And in the rural areas, the UFA adopted Alternative Voting (AV). The article describes AV thusly "The voting process worked the same way as STV, but each district only elected one MLA. To be elected, candidates [had] to earn a majority of the vote. If no one earned a majority of the vote on first preferences, the candidate with the fewest votes was eliminated and his or her votes were redistributed according to the [next marked preference]. Unfortunately and pretty much needlessly, the article says that the decision to use AV in rural area faced significant criticism. I say pretty much needlessly, because such a change was bound to arouse criticism by those who benefited from the previous FPTP and Block Voting systems. and should be taken with a grain of salt.

To wit, that "The argument was that AV would preserve the UFA’s dominance in rural areas while dividing the UFA’s opposition, which was primarily concentrated in the cities."

But note that the UFA would only benefit from AV in the rural areas where its candidates had majority support. This was generally the case in farmer-dominated rural Alberta at the time, but AV did not give the UFA any extra benefit in the rural area - the UFA would have won almost every seat through getting plurality under FPTP anyway.


And the use of STV gave the UFA no benefit either, except by aiding Labour candidates to get the seats they rightfully deserved in the cities, seats they might not have taken under FPTP. (Labour won no provincial seats in Edmonton prior to to STV, because FPTP rewarded the Liberal and Conservative candidates.).


The use of STV in the cities did not change the ratio of the government versus opposition seats in the legislature, as the UFA only ran one candidate in Edmonton/Calgary so really gained little or nothing through STV in the cities. STV is a proportional system so is fair to all, relative to voters' sentiment within each city -- but only those who run candidates can benefit from it.


The article says for the most part the results under AV did not differ much from what would have been the case under the plurality system. But in many FPTP elections nowadays a third of the MLAs are elected with less than a majority of the votes in the district. These elections may or may not have yielded different results if they had used AV. But AV would have given reassurance that the elected MLAs are in fact the choices of a majority of the voters, not at all the case nowadays.


But in Alberta history, there are several cases where the leading candidate on the first count did not go on to win the seat, where a different candidate was in fact the choice of a majority of the voters. These cases are hinted at by the phrase "for the most part." So statistically if AV changed the result in almost half the cases, you could say that for the most part no change was made. But such a large number of cases means that the effect is vast indeed. Then the article goes on to say ..."In Edmonton and Calgary, however, STV did make a difference. As a form of proportional representation, STV ensured that voter preferences in the cities were more accurately reflected in their representation in the provincial legislature. In the face of the overwhelming dominance of the UFA and later Social Credit, STV ensured that there was at least some opposition in the legislature. Edmonton and Calgary also elected MLAs from parties that might not otherwise have earned seats." Better to say "In Edmonton and Calgary, however, STV did make a difference. As a form of proportional representation, STV ensured that the variety of sentiments of city voters were fairly represented in the provincial legislature. While First Past The Post produces landslide victories for the leading party in each city, STV produced mixed representation and secured the election of MLAs of the major parties in each city."


The point is that STV is a district-based system, where the sentiment of voters in the district are all that is important to produce representation. The dominance outside Edmonton has no effect on representative elected in Edmonton under STV, and it is not even considered.


The situation under the UFA period is a stark case of this. The UFA only ever ran one candidate in Edmonton/Calgary at any one time. Its dominance in the province as a whole had almost nothing to do with the situation in Edmonton/Calgary. The UFA never was the popular choice in Edmonton/Calgary.


This situation was different during the Social Credit period. The SC party was (often) the popular choice in each city and in the province as a whole.

During the SC period, Premier Manning and the SC government, unlike the fair-minded UFA, looked askance at the moderately large number of opposition MLAs elected under STV in the cities and took action.


The article has it "... The Social Credit government abandoned this dual system in 1956. Although [it] cited the high levels of ballot rejection as the reason for the change, this seemed to be a transparent excuse [to replace] a system [that was electing many opposition MLAs.] Social Credit abolished the STV and AV systems, introducing a Single Member Plurality (SMP) system that has remained in place in Alberta ever since."


The article does not state that the change to non-proportional winner-take-all First Past The Post yielded unrepresentative results, a windfall of seats to the government. How in the very next election, the Government went from winning six seats in Edmonton/Calgary to it winning 12 of the 13 seats there, far more than its share of the votes warranted.


And it should be mentioned how in the rural areas, many MLAs were now elected with the support of only a minority of the voters in each district, a thing formerly an impossibility under AV.


As well, we should note that although the "high level of ballot rejection" was used as justification for the change, the number of Effective Votes is much larger under STV or AV than under FPTP.


The number of Effective Votes, votes used to elect someone, was usually 80 to 90 percent of the votes cast under STV and under AV no fewer than 49 percent, but under FPTP, as few as 34 percent of the votes are often enough to elect a MLA, with overall 40 to 65 percent of the votes disregarded.


Under STV/AV less than 15 percent of the votes were rejected.


So the justification for the change was trumped up and should hardly be even mentioned. The change should be seen as an unwarranted power grab by the SC government, one that is now echoed and maintained by every government that continues the un-representative system we now are forced to vote under.


Thanks for reading.

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