Instant-runoff voting in Canada (circa 1951)
Curious about how this whole recent attempt at proportional representation started, I went looking through our history books and found, to my surprise, that we had it back in 1951. Dr. Ben Isitt’s The Ghost of Elections Past explains.
The 1950s was a period of social and political flux. The Liberals and Conservatives had formed a Coalition government a decade earlier, after the CCF won the most votes in a general election. […] The final act of co-operation between the Liberals and Conservatives was passage of the Provincial Elections Act Amendment Act, introducing the transferable vote in the spring 1951 legislative session. Both parties had endorsed the voting system at conventions in the 1940s. […] The Liberals expected to receive second preferences of Conservative voters, while Conservatives expected to be ranked second by Liberal voters.
In short, they figured they had the popular vote, but would stand to lose their seats due to vote splitting, one of the side effects of the first-past-the-post system. By switching to the instant-runoff voting system, they thought they would maintain their seats. What they didn’t seem to count on was that the Social Credit party had the popular vote and won out over the previous coalition in the subsequent election.
Social Credit – untested and untainted in the legislature – edged out the CCF, 19 seats to 18. The Liberals and Conservatives fell to six and four seats respectively. W.A.C. Bennett became premier with a minority Social Credit government. The next spring, he engineered his defeat in the legislature, won a majority mandate in a snap election, and promptly repealed the Provincial Elections Act changes. British Columbia returned to the old first-past-the-post voting system that prevails to this day.
Once the Social Credit party had the majority, they revoked the electoral reform. While it was put in place for self-serving reasons, IRV is a fairer electoral system (not perfect, but fairer). Bennett’s motivations aren’t detailed in the linked article and I don’t know if they’re documented anywhere, but the effect is the same.
