The Edmonton, Alberta electoral district was created when Alberta became a province, replacing the territorial electoral district of the same name. It existed in two incarnations from 1905 - 1913 and again from 1921 - 1959, with the city (small as it was in former times) broken up into separate single-member constituencies in the other time-periods. The district was created when Alberta became a province, to encompass residents of the city of Edmonton on the northside of the North Saskatchewan River. The Edmonton district was extended to the southside of the river in 1921, By that time, the southside City of Strathcona had merged into the City of Edmonton.
From 1909 to 1917 and from 1921 to 1956, the Edmonton provincial constituency elected multiple members.
From 1905 to 1926 and 1959 to present, each Edmonton voter could cast as many votes as the number of seats in the district. In 1909 and 1913, Edmonton voters could cast up to two votes each. In 1921 they could cast up to five votes, the same number as seats. Edmonton used Single transferable voting in general elections held between 1926 and 1959, where each voter cast one transferable vote. In the province's history, there were three multi-member districts, the other ones being Calgary and Medicine Hat.
History
Three methods of electing representatives were used over the years in the Edmonton district.
First past the post election of a single member was used in 1905 (and in all by-elections up to 1924).
The Edmonton constituency was divided into two single-member constituencies for the provincial election of 1917: Edmonton East and Edmonton West. The adjacent constituency of Edmonton South had been renamed from the old constituency of Strathcona.
The three Edmonton districts were merged to form the Edmonton constituency in 1921, and block voting was established in 1921, to elect five members in the constituency.
Block voting (voters able to cast as many votes as there were seats) was used in 1909 and 1913, each voter casting up to two votes, and up to five votes in 1921.
As a semblance of proportional representation, the UFA government brought in ranked voting for all constituencies starting in 1924. It maintained Edmonton, Calgary and Medicine Hat as multi-member constituencies, with seats now filled through Single transferable vote, which at the time was called the Hare system or simply as Proportional representation.[3]Instant-runoff voting was used outside those multi-member districts and was also used in provincial by-elections during this period.
Edmonton had five seats in 1926-1930, then six seats in 1930 to 1940, then five until 1952. Edmonton had seven seats elected at-large in 1952 and 1955.
The first woman elected to a provincial seat in Edmonton was Mary Lemessurier in 1979. Women candidates had run in Edmonton prior to that including during the time STV was used, but none were elected.
No Labour, CCF or NDP MLA was elected in the city from 1905 to 1982, other than in some of the elections when PR was used.[4]
Expansion of seats and districts in Edmonton
The first table shows at a glance, the number of seats available by general election year for the Edmonton riding. The second table shows the number of districts in Edmonton, when the Edmonton riding was broken up.
After 1956, all Alberta MLAs were elected in single member districts so since then the number of districts has been the same as the number of seats as shown in the next table.
Southside Edmonton (Strathcona) was independent from Edmonton until 1912. The area that is present-day Edmonton was spread over many districts, such as Strathcona, Leduc, Sturgeon and St. Albert. Gradually the city has grown to take in previously-rural land.[5][6]
For the 1913 election, Edmonton South Provincial electoral district was created from the old Strathcona constituency to elect one MLA. The Edmonton constituency elected two members by the block vote system.
Edmonton party composition at a glance
The representation elected from 1926 to 1955 can be seen to be more mixed and balanced than representation elected both before and after that period. Not shown in the table below is the fact that in 1917 a Liberal and a Conservative were elected, and in 1959 one party took all the Edmonton seats.
Prior to 1926, Edmonton elected its members using First past the post or Block voting.
District-level proportional representation (Single transferable voting was used from 1924 to 1955.
Since 1955, Edmonton has elected its MLAs through First past the post.
(Note: Independent Citizens were members of the Unity League, an anti-SC coalition of Liberals, Conservatives and others.)
(Note: The "1942" column shows the change made by the 1942 by-election when Elmer Roper was elected. The other columns are all general elections. By-elections held in 1936 and 1937 saw a Liberal elected to replace the Liberal who had left the post so there was no change in party composition.)
In the 1913 Alberta general election Premier Arthur Sifton, his lieutenant Charles Wilson Cross and Liberal candidate Alexander Grant MacKay each won nominations in two electoral districts. The Calgary Herald (a Conservative newspaper) surmised that Sifton and Cross were so scared of the electorate they felt they might not win if they ran in just one district. It accused Premier Sifton of having little confidence in his ability to return his government to power. Charles Cross would sit as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for both Edmonton and Edson.
This election was conducted using block voting, where each Edmonton voter could cast up to two votes.
Source: "Edmonton Official Results 1913 Alberta general election". Alberta Heritage Community Foundation. Retrieved May 21, 2020. Note: The total number of ballots cast is not known. Election held under multiple non-transferable vote for two members to the Legislative Assembly. The results do not include 10 polls which were not counted.[7] Charles Wilson Cross was elected and chose to sit as the representative in both Edmonton and Edson. Alexander Grant MacKay is erroneously listed as a Conservative for the 1913 election in many Government of Alberta publications, likewise Albert Freeman Ewing is erroneously listed as a Liberal
This election was conducted using block voting, where each Edmonton voter could cast up to five votes. All in all, 75,758 votes were cast by the approximately 18,000 voters who voted in this election. The percentages shown in the table below indicate the proportion of the voters casting votes who cast votes in the candidate's favour. About a third of the voters casting all five of their votes for the five Liberal candidates accrue a total of 150 "percent" of the votes while the candidates still only receive the support of a third of the voters. With the rest of the votes split among other parties, the Liberals with possibly only a third of the voter support did take all the Edmonton seats in this election.
This was the first election in Alberta to use ranked voting in Instant-runoff voting, a system just introduced for elections of single members in by-elections in Alberta's largest cities.
W.T. Henry got the most votes in the first count but no candidate received a majority of them so subsequent counts were held using second choices of the lower-ranking candidates. He was elected on third count.
Communist Party candidate H.M. Bartholomew showed strong third place showing, almost exceeding Conservative candidate on the second count.
1926
Unlike the previous election, starting in 1926, the general election would be held using Single transferable voting. The districting remained the same with all of Edmonton in one city-wide district electing multiple members but now each voter cast just one vote.
In this election, 18,154 valid ballots were cast in Edmonton. About 751 had been rejected for being improperly filled out, a proportion of about 4 percent.
Under the STV procedure used (the Hare system devised by Thomas Hare in 1850s), the quota that guaranteed winning a seat was set as the Droop quota. This quota was 3026 (18,154 divided by 6, one more than the number of seats being contested, plus 1).
As candidates were eliminated, their votes were transferred to the remaining candidates in accordance with back-up preferences marked by the voter. (Marking of back-up preferences was voluntary and some voters simply marked jut one preference, their first choice. Votes eligible for transfer that had no next usable back-up preference were routed to the exhausted pile, but at the and only ten percent of the votes had had to be sidelined that way.)[9]
With voters at complete liberty to rank the candidates along whatever criterion they wanted, some votes were transferred across party lines. Thus naturally the end result under STV differed from the party vote shares as per first preferences. But in this case the results were roughly proportional to each party's take of the first preference votes with two Conservatives, a Liberal, a Labour and a UFA winning seats. Labour and UFA were elected to their first Edmonton seat in this election, Edmonton's first PR election. This fairness was achieved not by reference to party shares but by the system's ability to produce high proportion of effective votes - votes actually used to elect someone. in this case, more than 14,000 votes, of the district's 18,000 valid votes, were used to actually elect someone, a rate of 78 percent.
The UFA ran one candidate, J.F. Lymburn. He led the polls, achieving quota in the first count and being declared elected. (Many of his surplus votes went to Labour candidates.) He was elected with just first preferences. All the other successful candidates would be elected with mixture of first preference votes and votes transferred to them through back-up preferences from unsuccessful candidates. They also each had votes received by early successful candidates that were transferred due to being surplus to the quota.
Prevey (Liberal) and Duggan (Conservative) won seats without the quota in the last counts, after other candidates were eliminated or elected.
Not all the five candidates who were most popular in the first count were elected in the end.
Independent Liberal Joe Clarke received many votes on the first count but did not make quota in first count and did not pick up enough votes from other candidates' later preferences to get quota, likely due to not being in a political party.
Liberal candidate J.C. Bowen was in the top five in first count, but also did not get quota and despite being in a party and thus likely to receive vote transfers, was not elected - many of the other Liberal party candidates' votes were transferred not to him but instead to another Liberal candidate, W.W. Prevey, a more popular individual overall, it seems. Eventually Prevey's vote total surpassed Bowen's, and Bowen, not Prevey, was eliminated when his turn came.
Labour although not having anyone in top five spots in first count, did capture a seat. This was proportional - its five candidates received about 20 percent of the vote. STV's transferable votes generally prevent bad effects of vote splitting, by allowing a party's dispersed votes to be concentrated on one or two leading party candidates as happened in this case. Farmilo, the leading labour candidate in the first count, was not elected though. Gibbs apparently as an individual was more popular overall than Farmilo. He got quota in a later count through distribution of other candidates' second preferences. This included both votes of supporters of his fellow Labour candidates and some supporters of Joe Clarke and other non-Labour candidates as well.
The Conservative party ran five candidates. The vote was spread among all five in the first count. None got quota in the first count. Weaver did later after three of his companion Conservative candidates were eliminated. Another Conservative (Duggan) - plus a Liberal (Prevey) - got seats by being relatively popular among the last ones still standing as the field of candidates thinned to just one more than the number of remaining open seats, at which time the two top remaining candidates - Conservative Duggan and Liberal Prevey - were declared elected, although not having quota.
By-election necessitated by MLA Howson's resignation.
Instant-runoff voting but no vote transfers conducted
Liberal W. Morrish elected with majority of votes on the first count.
1937 by-election
By-election necessitated by death of George Van Allen.
Liberal E.L. Gray was elected with majority of votes on the first count.
1940
Five seats were open in this election. The quota, the number of votes certain to win a seat, was 7291.
This election saw an anti-SC movement, made up of Liberals, Conservatives and some UFA-ers, get many seats. Page, Duggan and Macdonald were elected in Edmonton this election as candidates of the People's League AKA Unity Movement, recorded as Independent in results below.
Four of that group's candidates placed in the top five spots in the first count, but this was un-proportional and the process thinned them down.
SC candidate Norman James placed low in the first count but got enough votes from other candidates who were dropped out, and from Manning's surplus votes, to take a seat, pushing out O'Connor, a Unity League candidate. He did this without achieving quota but by being one of the last ones standing when the field of candidates thinned out. Due to his personal popularity, he leapfrogged over a couple SC candidates to take the seat, demonstrating that the STV-PR is about voters' preferences for individual candidates and not party lists.
"Edmonton results 1940 Alberta general election". Alberta Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 8, 2010. Note: Five seats were awarded in the Edmonton Electoral District through single transferable vote. The Hare Quota, the number of votes needed to win a seat, was 7,291. Ernest Manning and John P. Page were elected on the first count.
Many of the candidates listed as Independents, such as sitting MLA D.M. Duggan, were candidates for the Unity League, an anti-SC alliance of Conservatives, Liberals and others.
1942 by-election
After D.M. Duggan's passing in May 1942, his Edmonton seat was filled in a by-election.
This by-election was run according to Instant-runoff voting, which was used for all by-elections in Alberta in the 1924-1955 period. Voters across Edmonton voted as the city was a single constituency at this time.
There was only one seat being contested. Under IRV ( Alternative Vote), the winner had to take a majority of the valid votes.
Lymburn, a former UFA cabinet minister, was running as an anti-SC Unity League candidate. He did well in the first count surpassing the vote total of the SC candidate; but both being passed by CCF-er Roper. Roper however did not take a majority of the vote.
It became a tight race between front-runners Roper and Lymburn. The winner was not named until the fourth round after three of the five candidates had been eliminated and their second preferences distributed. There was such a high number of exhausted ballots because about half of the voters who voted for the SC, Soldiers Rep and Liberal candidates did not give second preferences.
But finally when the SC candidate, the third from the bottom in the first count, was dropped off in the fourth round, there were only two candidates and one or the other of the candidates would take a majority of the votes still in play. It is possible that in the last round, when the SC candidate was dropped off, most of his voters' second preferences went to Roper, apparently being thought more in tune with SC's help-the-little-guy philosophy than the business-minded Conservative/Liberal-member-dominated Unity League.
1944 quota was 6306 (just more than one-sixth of the total valid ballots). Premier Manning got it in the first count, with 8000 votes to spare. His surplus votes (enough on their own to elect another candidate) were spread among the other four SC candidates (according to the voter's next marked preference) so none of the other SC candidates received enough in the 2nd Count to take a seat right off.
Page, running for the anti-SC Unity League, here identified as Independent, was in top five in the first count. The League, winding down, ran only one candidate and League votes were not spread around. He took enough votes in the first count to hold on to take a seat in later counts.
Johnnie Caine, a WWII ace, running as an Independent, was personally popular but did not get quota in the first count and not having a party behind him, did not receive many of the other candidates' second preferences when they were dropped off.
The first candidates to be eliminated were mostly Communists and CCF candidates, whose voters it seems gave their second preferences to their own, such as Roper who took a seat, and then eventually to Norman James, of the SC party. James and William J. Williams were the last two standing when the field of candidates thinned out and they took seats even without achieving the quota.
The quota was 7692, one sixth of the 46,150 total valid votes. Manning got it in first count, with 14,000 votes to spare. His surplus votes helped elect two other SC candidates, Heard and Adams, at the end.
Prowse also got quota but no other Liberal got in on his shirt-tails.
CCF's Elmer Roper too exceeded quota, near to the end. His surplus was not distributed, perhaps because by then the count was at an end with only two candidates left standing to fill two remaining seats. Two SC-ers, Heard and Clayton, took these without achieving quota.
Result was roughly proportional to the first preference vote shares of the three parties that ran in this contest. (The Conservatives stayed out, supporting Page, an opponent of the SC government, running for the Independent Citizens' Association.)
Premier Manning alone took almost half the votes in the first count, and his party took more than half the seats. The CCF took one sixth of the first preference votes and one-fifth of the seats. The Liberals took about one-fifth the votes and one-fifth of the seats. Only about one-tenth of the votes were wasted - this included Page.
On a candidate basis, two of the top five in the first count were not elected. Page was not popular with enough second preferences, while Liberal Lazarowich also did not have holding power. (SC-ers Heard and Clayton replaced them in the top five to take seats.)
This election, like the previous six, was held under Hare Single Transferable Voting STV-PR system.
Seven seats were filled.
Quota was 6505, one-eighth of the 52,039 total valid votes.
Five of the seven in winning positions in the First Count were elected at the end.
Manning and Prowse won in the first Count, with votes to spare. Their surplus votes were transferred to a less-popular SC and a Liberal candidate respectively, who then were elected themselves.
Three were elected with partial quotas at the end.
Seats in the end were allocated proportionally to the parties' share of the votes - SC party taking three seats, Liberals taking two, and a Conservative and CCF member also being elected.[11]
"Edmonton results 1952 Alberta general election". Alberta Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 8, 2010. Note: Seven seats were awarded in the Edmonton Electoral District through single transferable vote. The Hare Quota, the number of votes needed to win a seat, was 6,505. Ernest Manning, James Harper Prowse, and Elmer Roper were elected on the first count.
6248 votes were spoiled and declared rejected. This was said to be due to a change of rules. Outside Edmonton, votes marked with an X were now rejected while previously they had been accepted. And this rule change there might have confused Edmonton voters. Another possible cause was that elections with higher than normal turnout saw inexperienced voters attempting to mark ranked ballots for the first time. Edmonton suffering more than 9 percent spoiled votes in 1952 was possibly caused by the strict rules that election officials had to use - by law any ballot not marked with a "1" was rejected even if the mark used by the voters might have clearly signaled their intention.[12]
Quota was 9569, just more than one-eighth of the 76,544 valid votes. This amount guaranteed election but it was possible to be elected with fewer votes.
District results from the first province wide plebiscite on electricity regulation.
Option A
Option B
Are you in favour of the generation and distribution of electricity being continued by the Power Companies?
Are you in favour of the generation and distribution of electricity being made a publicly owned utility administered by the Alberta Government Power Commission?
22,351 50.99%
21,478 49.01%
Province wide result: Option A passed.
The result in Edmonton was closely balanced. In part this was due to the choice being between electrical generation by a city-owned corporation or by the provincial government.
Question A: Do you approve additional types of outlets for the sale of beer, wine and spirituous liquor subject to a local vote?
Ballot choice
Votes
%
Yes
46,219
71.98%
No
17,994
28.02%
Total votes
64,213
100%
Rejected, spoiled and declined
75
127,279 eligible electors, turnout 50.94%
Question B2: Should mixed drinking be allowed in beer parlours in Edmonton and the surrounding areas?
Ballot choice
Votes
%
Yes
48,645
75.85%
No
15,485
24.15%
Total votes
64,134
100%
Rejected, spoiled and declined
622
127,279 eligible electors, turnout 50.88%
On October 30, 1957, a stand-alone plebiscite was held province wide in all 50 of the then current provincial electoral districts in Alberta. The government decided to consult Alberta voters to decide on liquor sales and mixed drinking after a divisive debate in the Legislature. The plebiscite was intended to deal with the growing demand for reforming antiquated liquor control laws.[14]
The plebiscite was conducted in two parts. Question A asked in all districts, asked the voters if the sale of liquor should be expanded in Alberta, while Question B asked in a handful of districts within the corporate limits of Calgary and Edmonton asked if men and woman were allowed to drink together in establishments.[13] Question B was slightly modified depending on which city the voters were in.[13]
Province wide Question A of the plebiscite passed in 33 of the 50 districts while Question B passed in all five districts. Edmonton voted overwhelmingly in favor of the plebiscite. The district recorded slightly above average voter turnout almost just over the province wide 46% average with over half of eligible voters casting a ballot.[13]
Edmonton also voted on Question B2. Residents voted for mixed drinking with a super majority. Turnout for question B. Turnout for Question B was slightly lower and than Question A.[13]
Official district returns were released to the public on December 31, 1957.[13] The Social Credit government in power at the time did not considered the results binding.[15] However the results of the vote led the government to repeal all existing liquor legislation and introduce an entirely new Liquor Act.[16]
Municipal districts lying inside electoral districts that voted against the Plebiscite were designated Local Option Zones by the Alberta Liquor Control Board and considered effective dry zones, business owners that wanted a license had to petition for a binding municipal plebiscite in order to be granted a license.[17]
