In an ideal democracy, the government looks like the people it represents and acts the way they want it to.
The Vancouver City Council often falls far short of that ideal, but it doesn’t have to; if Vancouver adopted Single Transferable Vote (STV), a proportional voting method, more neighbourhoods and more viewpoints would get fair representation on the council.
Vancouver, like most BC municipalities, currently uses an outdated election model called "block voting." It rarely works as it should: last municipal election, ABC councillors won 35% of the vote, yet somehow collected seven of ten council seats—double their actual support. Likewise, the Non-Partisan Association won 51% of the vote in 1991, yet took all ten seats, leaving no room for other voices.
To large and small degrees, the intervening years are littered with similarly distorted outcomes, underrepresenting both left- and right-leaning parties. As recently as 2014, Vision Vancouver managed a majority of the seats while coming second in total votes to the NPA. On the occasions block voting has delivered a council that acts the way the public wants, it may well have been by accident.
If there's one thing local candidates and elected officials can count on, though, it's that block voting fosters a "winner-take-all" environment in which parties and lawmakers focus on dividing their opposition, rather than coming together to solve problems.
The unstable nature of block voting makes for inconsistent policy; one party can have a blowout win one election and completely wipe out the next. Since there's no reason for lawmakers to build consensus, it's been difficult for Vancouver to make lasting progress on issues like the budget, crime, or housing as the council flip-flops from one type of majority to another with little daylight between.
Some proponents prefer a ward (or district) system. Under such a model, councillors represent only part of the city, rather than the whole. Vancouver voted on a ward model in a 2004 referendum and defeated it, but that plan had a fatal flaw: it specified just one city councillor per ward.
One-winner wards replicate flaws of the current at-large system in miniature. With only one councillor per ward, one group of voters will win; everybody else loses. Even without a city-wide majority, a single party can sweep most or all of the wards and the outcome is the same: winner-take-all mindset and divisive politics. For an example, look no further than the United States Congress. The lower chamber's one-winner districts promote fractious politics and force unhappy voters to choose between the "lesser of two evils."
There is a middle-ground approach, though: bigger wards with multiple councillors. With the Single Transferable Vote (STV) model, councillors still represent specific parts of the city, but as a team that reflects their neighbourhood. Suddenly, there's room for diversity (demographic and ideological) and cooperation.
One party's win no longer means all other voices get drowned out. Vote share translates to seat share—in other words, it’s proportional. That’s not just a theory: Portland, Oregon adopted STV and, for the first time ever, got a council that looks like the city in miniature.
In Vancouver, proportional representation is not a brand-new concept. A majority of Vancouver voters supported STV in a 2005 provincial referendum election. In 2005, 2017, and 2021, the Vancouver City Council voted in favor of asking for provincial permission to adopt proportional elections. In 2026, Vancouver Liberals mayoral candidate Kareem Allam expressed openness to STV, and COPE included a commitment to proportional elections in its slate of policy positions.
Block voting may work just fine for the small contingent of the public who've been pleased with how Vancouver has been governed for the last 40 years. Those who want to solve real problems facing the city deserve something better. The STV model does just that, giving all voters, all neighbourhoods, and all major parties their fair share of seats at the table.
Ryan Campbell is a member of the Board of Directors of Fair Vote Canada.
Al Vanderklipp is a Researcher at Sightline Institute.
