On Saturday 19 October 2024, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) had an election to decide the 93 geographic, first past the post (FPTP), representatives to the BC legislature (member of the legislature assembly MLA).
As in all Canadian parlimentary elections, the political party with the most elected representatives (aka seats) will attempt to form a government with the leader of that political party becoming Prime Minister (for the Canadian Federal government) or Premier (for any of the ten provincies and two of the three territories).
If it happens that a party has more that half of the seats, then that party forms a majority and will have little to no trouble passing legislation for the following maximium of five years and a day. If the party with the most seats has fewer than half, then that party (may) form a minority government which can be defeated in a "confidence motion" if enough other elected polital parties "gang on on them".
For many years, the people of BC elected majority governments. There was a minority in 1941 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_British_Columbia_general_election) and 1952 and then the next wasn't until 2017. Since 1941 the parties to the right of centre attempted to "get along" in order to keep parties (or rather the party) to the left out of power. All BC elections were FPTP except for an experiment with preferential balots and install runoff voting in 1952 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_British_Columbia_general_election).
FPTP is critisized for many good reasons and can be prone to "gerry mandering". BC had it's share of these sorts of shenagiands until the Elections BC office became independant of a legislative "veto" (https://elections.bc.ca/docs/rpt/BCEBC-Prelim/Part%203-HistoryOfElectoralBoundaries.pdf). In 1956 "multi member districts" were introduced and they persisted until 1972 and were reintroduced for the 1983 and 1986 elections. At various times, the winning party won a majority of seats with less than 40% of the vote (1953, 1960, 1972, and the last time in 1996).
Other methods of electing representatives have been tried historically (see above) and were voted on (and defeated) during the 2005 and 2009 elections.
Since 2005 the popular vote of the NDP and the right wing flavor of the day (most recently Conservatives) have both been between 40% and 50%.
This "tie situation" became obvious in 2017 when the right wing flavor of the day (Liberals) were one seat short of a majority. It was just repeated on Saturday when the NDP also found themselves one seat short of a majority. In 2017, the NDP arranged with the Green party (the third and only other party elected) a "Confidence and Suppy Agreement"(CASA) to allow them to govern for some period of time.
The likely outcome of this weekends election would be a similar situation where the NDP and Green party would enter into another CASA.
The devil is in the details.
Two recounts are been ordered as the winning candidate for those ridings has fewer than 100 votes more than the nearest challenger.
People who voted outside their area (aka "absentee ballots") need to be counted. Mail in votes need to be counted. It is estimated that there are 19,000 of these votes, which is just bit fewer than the total voting poplulation (20,552) of the smallest geographic representative "riding" (Buckley Valley-Stikine: 20,552).
[this has been substantially updated to 65,000 not-yet-counted votes as of 2024 10 25 - this exceeds even the largest (Salmon-Arm Shuswap: 62,420) of the 93 "ridings"]
(Sizes of BC "ridings": https://elections.bc.ca/docs/rpt/BCEBC-Final-Report-April-3-2023.pdf
How many votes still need to be counted: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-election-2024-how-vote-recount-will-work-conservative-ndp-green-party)
Is FPTP no longer working in BC? Did it EVER work in BC?
Other methods of electing representatives are often based on some calculus using the popular vote. However, this method would show a difference of only a single seat if the MLAs were selected on solely the overall popular vote. The Green party would have more than two seats in this situation, but the difference between the NDP and Conservatives would still be only one seat (and both would be denied a majority).
As long as the BC politics remain polarized, this situation is likely to persist.
Arguably, the "high granularity" with almost 100 MLAs for the province ensures that FPTP works better than fewer FPTP MLAs. For instance, Surrey has ten seats. At the moment, half are Conservative and half are NDP (with one recount pending). In theory, a mult seat perferenial vote for 10 representatives in Surrey could conceivably have the same result.
The Surrey example is an over simplication, as different areas of BC tend to lean "right" or "left" and few places are as evenly split as Surrey.
As noted previously, the devil is in the details.
Finally, what might happen once all the votes are counted?
1. The seat totals do not change. The NDP and Greens sign a CASA.
2. The seat totals do not change. The NDP and Greens do NOT sign a CASA. This current legislature then becomes a vote to vote situation where a loss of a confidence vote will trigger a new election which might result in a similar result of seats.
3. The seat totals DO change and the NDP squeaks out a majority. They will continue to govern as now.
4. The seat totals DO change and the Conservations squeak out a majority. The NDP is defeated and a new government takes charge in BC.
5 The seat totals DO change but now the Conservative have more seats BUT are still short of a majority. They might attempt a CASA with the Greens to form government, but this would probably fail. This then becomes a vote to vote situation where a loss of a confidence vote will trigger a new election which might result in a similar result of seats.
Confucious is quoted as "may you live in interesting times". I've seen this interpreted as curse.
