1871 W.R. Ware used STV to elect Harvard University overseers.
than again in May 1872 he used STV to elect 12 overseers of the Harvard College.
Details of this election are given in Hare, The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal, p. 355-359.
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Favourite English authors
previously to the 1871 and 1872 Harvard overseers' elections, Ware held a demonstration STV election to let students vote on their favourite English author
150 votes. 6 votes rejected.
144 valid votes.
4 to be elected:
Shakespeare, Scott, Tennyson and Burns won.
Dickens was 3rd on first count but not elected. Apparently other than his first-choice supporters, few others gave their back up preferences to him.
Report of W.E. Ware's demonstration STV election 1871
in Hare's book The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal
p. 351-355
eight candidates listed on printed ballot,
(all received votes, four went on to be elected.)
election allowed write-in candidates
27 candidates were write-in candidates in first round of counting.
Dickens was a write-in candidate. He got 11 write-in votes in first round of counting, and received 7 more as transfers from other candidates.
Milton received two votes as vote transfers from other candidates
150 M.I.T. students participated. four rejected.
Hare quota -- 36
only 6 put in rejected ballots, doubling up their first preference or second preference.
"scattering " used to group 26 candidates who received just one first preference each.
36 candidates received votes (including Milton who started receiving votes in the second round of counting)
eventually concentrating behind just four.
three elected with quota 36, one elected with 32.
only 4 exhausted ("lost")
some votes potentially transferring 4 times.
transfers in column VIII and IX not necessary,
because in column VII, only three candidates remaining in running for last two seats.
once one (the least-popular) is declared defeated, the process should have ended.
Ware even looked at how to deal with a casual vacancy (byelection) with countback
and found that Macaulay would take votes if Shakespeare's seat came open and would win. this was said to be "felicitous" result as "he had narrowly missed being elected" in the general election
actually he was second-last candidate to be defeated, being eliminated prior to the VII round of counting.
(Ware did not actually prove that IRV would work but apparently made it look he had.)
Dickens was the last candidate defeated. Despite being a write-in candidate, he started out in third place (he started with 11 votes - most of the candidates only had one vote) He survived to the VII round of counting.
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Shakespeare won a seat on 1st round of counting. his surplus went largely to Scott
Scott, Tennyson won seats in middle rounds
Burns at end with partial quota.
Ware reported that it took only two or three hours to arrive at the final result, not nearly as long as an earlier election had taken, that had used Limited Voting, when each voter had cast five votes. (p. 355)
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In summary
from wiki "ranked votes"
Professor W.R. Ware held a demonstration STV election in 1871, having 150 M.I.T. students elect four English authors as their favorites. The field of candidates held the names of 35 authors in the first count, and eventually concentrated behind just four. Ware went on to surmise how a casual vacancy might be handled and found that countback would produce a winner. This proved that ranked transferable votes could be used to produce a single winner, despite the qualms of Condorcet and others.[10]
Ware's 1871 report is important as it contains list of 16 advantages of STV.
He states STV's ranked voting can be used as easily in election of one as election of multiple members (STV).
Ranked voting and vote transfers enable the party of the minority to select between two candidates of the majority, preventing a mere majority of the majority (a power block within the majority group) from dictating the results.
Thus it would prevent the "foreign interference" that occurs when nomination to a safe seat is very effective way to control whom is elected.
(For the party of the majority to run multiple candidates, you would need a multi-member contest. And even then it is not at all certain that both would be in running at last stage of vote count.)
Ware's 16 advantages of STV
(many of the same advantages are seen to lesser degree in IRV)
they are presented and dissected in the Montopedia blog https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/benefits-of-proportional-representation
They are also presented in Newman's book Hare-Clark in Tasmania.
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See Ware, Machinery of Politics (1872) 31 pages
(does not show English author election results -- no detail of the demonstration STV election)
talks of
three empirical election schemes -- FPTP, Limited Voting, Cumulative Voting
and three "rational or scientific" election schemes - Gove (Registered Ballot), Free Ticket (list PR), STV (p. 12)
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