A system that uses preferential voting in a single member district, or to elect a single person such as mayor, is called Alternative Voting (Instant-Runoff Voting if you prefer).
It is a majoritarian system - that is, the successful candidate must have the support of a majority of the voters. This can be achieved in the first count if a candidate is popular with more than half the voters or can be accumulated through vote transfers from other candidates during the eliminations that thin the field of candidates.
When Single Transferable Voting is used, any affiliated elections where only one person is elected use AV. Thus when Edmonton used STV for election of its city councillors - 1923-1927, the mayor was elected through AV. When STV was used for election of MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary - 1924 to 1955, AV was used for by-elections.
As well, AV was used in all the districts outside Edmonton and Calgary in all elections and by-elections from 1924 to 1955 (barring Medicine Hat in 1926, which used STV).
As well, AV was used provincially in almost all Manitoba districts outside Winnipeg from 1924 to 1955, and in ALL BC districts in the 1952 and 1953 provincial elections.
Does it produce proportional results, where a party's seat totals reflects its portion of the popular vote?
No. But there is assurance that the person elected has more general acceptability than any other candidate in the running.
Under certain circumstances, AV may make a large difference compared to FPTP results.
In 2015, if the Wildrose and Conservative candidates had together a majority of the vote in a district and the voters of each had given their first back-up preference to the other, there is no way a NDP could have been elected in the district under AV.
In 2019, if the Liberal and NDP and Green voters had together a majority and given their back-up preferences to each other, there is no way a Conservative could have taken a seat under AV.
In 1952, the BC provincial election used Alternative Voting. The Liberal and Conservative parties formerly part of a coalition, but now running separately, brought in AV, hoping to use their joint voting strength to keep out the CCF. In very few districts did they together have a majority of the votes and many of their voters gave second preferences to the SC, and not to the partner party. The SC, unexpectedly strong with first preferences (so much for opinion polls) and the beneficiary of many vote transfers from eliminated CCF candidates (and also Lib and Cons voters), took many seats and formed minority government.
AV had the effect in the end of pushing SC ahead in the seat count to pass the CCF and give them the position of trying to form government by relying on support from other parties to assemble a working majority in the legislature. It got that support for a year then the government fell, to be re-elected with a majority of the seats.
Does AV increase voter turn-out?
Harold Jansen, in his Canadian Journal of Political Science article "The Political Consequences of the Alternative Vote: Lessons from Western Canada" (Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 647-669) says not.
Compulsory voting, as in effect in Australia, is more effective at ensuring high turn-out.
Does AV increase coalition building between parties?
A district-level "coalition" may forward a joint candidate in a district under either FPTP or AV. A coalition government allocates the cabinet positions between or among members of the coalition parties. But at the district election level, where AV operates, there is nothing for the parties to exchange or split. The voter may give a back-up preference to another party of the coalition or may not - he or she may not even mark a back-up preference at all. Under AV, just as under STV, the voter has full liberty to vote as he or she wants. The voter is actually more free under AV and STV than under FPTP where strategic voting plays more of a part.
The already-divided Liberal/Conservative coalition in BC found this out in 1952. It learned it had little control under AV of how voters allocated preferences. And the two parties' representation was dwarfed by the rising SC.
As could be expected, coalition building does not happen under AV, unless already there was movement in that direction. Prof. Jansen found this in his study.
Without inter-party co-operation, many voters simply plump, mark only one preference. This reduces AV to a thing very similar to FPTP. A system where minority governments are more often produced such as FPTP or STV is more effective at producing this result at the overall level.
Does AV cause many spoiled votes?
Rejected/spoiled votes are produced when voters do not correctly mark their ballots.
Jansen in his research found that the rate of rejected ballots varied from AV province to AV province.
in BC the rate of rejected votes was high before AV was brought in, and went higher when AV was used. In part this was caused by confusion arising from the use of multi-member districts and AV.
How can you combine the two when AV only elects one member? In the multi-member districts, there was a separate "ballot" for each seat. A voter was issued a ballot for each seat, to mark with numbers preferentially. If she preferred to give first preference to two candidates on one ballot and none to any on the other, she was not allowed to. She may have anyway and thus both votes would be rejected.
AV is a form of Preferential voting. Voters use numbers to rank candidates. Under FPTP of course, votes just mark one X. Many voters, having become accustomed to FPTP, are confused by using numbers and mark their ballot incorrectly. This leads to rejected votes.
Some think they can mark their first preference with an X and numbers for the rest.
In Alberta this created a rejected vote - from 1924 to 1943.
In 1944 marking ballots with a mixture of X and numbers was allowed.
Then it was disallowed again before the 1948 election.
This change-back apparently led to a rise in the number of rejected votes, which did not dissipate for three elections. After 1955 the SC government used the high rate of rejected votes (which it had helped cause in the first place) as justification for the abandonment of AV.
As well, the government took advantage of the opportunity and also rid itself of much of the opposition MLAs elected in Edmonton and Calgary by also abandoning the Single Transferable Voting (STV) system used there. This system provides mixed roughly- proportional representation. The government cancelled it even though the rate of rejected votes there was not significant - many more votes would be thrown in the garbage can under FPTP.
Of course, the SC government hoped to benefit from the switch to FPTP. And it did.
In 1959, the next election government candidates were elected in many rural districts with only a minority of the vote.
Ernest Manning's SC Government also reaped a windfall of seats in the cities. Under STV in 1955 Edmonton had elected a mixture of Liberal, Conservative and SC MLAs, reflective of the sentiment of city voters. This would change after the government drew nine districts across Edmonton, splitting voting blocks, and imposed FPTP where the leading candidate on the first count in each district would be elected whether he or she commanded a majority of the votes or not.
SC took all nine seats in 1959, reaping the benefit of the abandonment of STV.
In seven seats - all but two - the SC candidate did not have a majority of the district vote.
And people worry about minority rule under STV. Heck, we have minority rule under FPTP in many cases.
None of these minority candidates would have been simply elected under AV. Not unless vote transfers gave them a majority of the the votes in the district.
Minority rule at the district level is an unknown thing under Alternative Voting. For that reason if for nothing else, AV is preferable to FPTP.
Thanks for reading.
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