1930 Alberta general election

The 1930 Alberta general election was held on June 19, 1930, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The United Farmers of Alberta won election to a third term in government, and John E. Brownlee continued as premier. This provincial election, like the previous election (1926), used district-level proportional representation (Single transferable voting) to elect the MLAs of Edmonton and Calgary. (Medicine Hat no longer had multiple seats.) City-wide districts were used to elect multiple MLAs in the two main cities. All the other MLAs were elected in single-member districts through Instant-runoff voting. Th United Farmers again ran one candidate in Edmonton and won that seat and did not run in Calgary. Altogether in the cities the UFA won just one seat in the cities (in Edmonton) but won a great share of the rural seats, by securing the support of a majority of votes in each district, as required under IRV (AKA Alternative Voting). The effect of STV in the cities was that candidates of four parties - UFA, Conservative, Liberal and Labour - were elected in Edmonton reflecting votes cast. STV in Calgary similarly produced mixed representation reflecting votes cast. Candidates of the Conservative, Liberal and Labour parties were elected there.

Nominations

There were a significant number of Independent nominations, many of which were in districts where the Liberals chose not to field candidates. In addition, four Communist Party candidates were nominated:

Beaver River

The most closely contested race in the election happened in the Beaver River electoral district. The election was a three-way race between incumbent United Farmers MLA John Delisle Liberal candidate Henry Dakin and Independent candidate Luc Lebel. The first count results showed Delisle leading Dakin by seven votes. Lebel was in third place with 87 votes. Under Instant runoff voting, when no candidate has a majority, the least-popular candidate is eliminated and his votes transferred. Lebel was eliminated and his 87 votes were transferred where second-choice preference had been marked. The new vote tallies showed Delisle with 21 more votes than Dakin. Delisle was declared elected on June 25, 1930, six days after the election was held. The Liberals challenged the results in provincial court. A judicial recount was ordered. Judge Taylor concluded on August 21, 1930, that the second count results showed Dakin had four more votes than Delisle. Delisle's election was overturned, and Dakin picked up the seat.

1930 redistribution of districts

An Act was passed in 1930 providing for an increase of seats from 60 to 63, upon the next election. Calgary and Edmonton now returned six MLAs each instead of five each, and the following other changes were made:

Results

MLAs elected

Synopsis of results

Multi-member districts

STV analysis

Exhausted votes

Nine districts went beyond first-preference counts in order to determine winning candidates: But of the remaining votes, 88 percent were used to elect someone in Edmonton; 90 percent were used to elect someone in Calgary; more than 50 percent were used to elect the winner in each district outside Edmonton and Calgary.

Calgary

Electing six MLAs The vote count proceeded in the following order:

Edmonton

Electing six MLAs Lymburn, Gibbs and Duncan were the only candidates that won by achieving the quota. Howson, Weaver and Atkinson won by attaining the three largest vote tallies of the four candidates still in the running in the final count.

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