A quick guide to terms used in study of elections
majority - - more than half minority -- less than half.
plurality winner in FPTP -- candidate who has more votes than any other candidate plurality winners in Block Voting -- the leading candidates enough in number to fill the seats. Scale of system (for lack of another term) -- district -- each covers just part of electorate -- each district elects one or two or more members at-large - all electorate is covered by one district. the mayor of a city or all of the city councillors for example
The five different levels of elections: - vote cast by voter (may be X voting or ranked ballot
(if system works right, the vote reflects the opinion of the voter.
Strategic voting is sometimes used but that is misrepresentation of the voter's sentiment.
- Transfers done as part of vote count, if any. Ranked votes are used to direct transfers.
Under STV not all votes have chance to be transferred, some not at all.
- District (or at-large contest) where winners of individual seats are filled in district or at-large (sometimes both district and at-large are used in city elections) only supporters of winners are represented. All other votes are cast aside or wasted.
(Rarely voters are divided into two different types of districts. The two groups of districts elect different members. such as New Zealand's districts and its Maori districts))
- Top-up seats /levelling seats if any
these seats are added after district seats are filled in MMP, AMS top-up may be done in region (as in Scottish Assembly) or overall (as in NZ MMP) Make-up of chamber
(composed by members elected in districts, or members elected at-large, or sometimes both members elected in districts and at-large, sometimes plus members elected as top-up) Majority of members in the chamber required to pass things (majority may be composed of members of just one party or members of two or more parties) sometimes supermajority or unanimous support required.
=============================== Caution: it is important not to mix district situation with make-up of chamber, not to confuse overall vote tallies with vote comparison in individual district contests. not to confuse seat count or local winners with the will of all the people, unles a proper PR sytgem is in place to ensure that there is actually that close equivalency. We take votes at face value but sometimes voters do not vote as they truly believe.
We should not confuse who voter wants to see elected in local district with how he or she votes in a district, although if a system works right, that is the way it should work. ===========
Type of election systems used in districts - plurality (FPTP Block voting) majority of votes not required to win. in FPTP as many as 82 percent of votes cast in a distict mey be ignored/wasted. - majoritarian (Instant-runoff voting) majority of votes required to win (or majoty of votes at time of declaration of winner, exhausted votes left out of equation)
- proportional (list PR, STV)- variety of parties represented as per vote share. As no party takes all the votes, no one party takes all the seats. as two or more partes are represented (usually four or more), many votes actually are used to elect someone, unlike in FPTP.
- semi-proportional -
Limited Voting,
Cumulative Voting,
Single Non-Transferable Voting. Two or more parties are represented in each district, but not every party takes its due share of seats.
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Districts are separate in an election system used across a whole country, some districts may elect one member by FPTP, while others elect multiple members by other methods.
The world has seen these mixtures -- most of them have been used in Canada: - FPTP and BV (every province at different times and every federal elections 1867 to 1970. - IRV and STV (AB and MB 1924 to 1955) - FPTP and STV (MB 1920-1924) - FPTP and list PR. (List PR has never been used in a Canadian election.)
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Types of election systems Plurality election systems - FPTP Block voting semi-proportional systems -- Limited Voting, Cumulative Voting Proportional Representation -- list PR, STV (confusingly, plurality is the rule in almost all systems.
The more-popular people are elected over the less-popular.
In most systems those with more votes are declared elected, those with less votes are not.
But
Plurality systems (FPTP, BV) are those where simple comparison through the simplest possible method is used to fill the seat or seats in each of the districts.
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Here's a categorization of common election systems:
number of winners in a contest-- single winner (single office at-large such as mayor, or chamber filled by single winner contests in districts dividing electorate. System used is usually one of FPTP, TRS, instant-runoff voting. multiple winners (block voting, STV, Limited Voting)
Type of electoral method --
direct elections - members elected by voters indirect (by legislature(s) and/or electoral college) (the mayor may be elected by the city councillors from among its own members, not by general voters.)
Election methods usually fit one of these general categories: plurality (sometimes called majoritarian) (body elected in winner-take-all districts e.g. FPTP, TRS, block voting), majoritarian (Instant-runoff voting, TRS), proportional (body elected by STV or party-list PR), semi-proportional (e.g. SNTV, LV). Mixed systems use two or more of these methods, and produce a chamber where different members are elected through two or more different election methods.
(Mixed Member Proportional elects members through both first past the post and proportional.)
Parallel voting systems, such as used in Egypt, are examples of mixed systems -- different systems using different votes are used to elect different members.
Seats per district or contest
Some elections are held to fill all the seats in the chamber (Netherlands, Israel).
Most elections are split into a number of districts where all the members are elected at one time.
In some elections, there is one person elected per district.
In others, there are many people elected per district.
(sometimes all districts have same number of seats; other systems use districts with varying number of seats.)
(Proportional representation and STV depends on use of a contest that fills multiple seats at one time so use of multi-member districts or some form of pooling of votes into a quantity large enough to be due two or more members.)
Staggered terms
Some election systems see only half or a third of the members elected at one time.
(But even where staggered terms are used and a third of members are to be elected each election, it is possible to elect two or more in a particular place If one third of the districts elect their three members at the same time, instead of a third of the seats in each place being up for election each time.)
Election systems can use one or more layers. First past the post elections use just one layer.
MMP (an example of a mixed system listed above) uses both district elections and overall pooling of votes, usually where voters cast both a district vote and a party vote.
In Demark's mixed member system, a single vote is used both for election of the district member and of a party top-up seat.
Some city election systems, such as City of Thunder Bay (Canada)*, Seattle (U.S.)* and Nelson (New Zealand), use both ward elections and at-large district to elect members of city council.
At-large contests elect multiple members so make either list PR, STV or block voting possible.
As well, multi-member wards, such as used in Nelson (NZ) (and in Edmonton in every election prior to 2010), make either list PR, STV or block voting possible.
Single-winner ward contests usually use the first past the post, instant-runoff voting or the two-round system.[1]
often choice put to city voters is to choose between FPTP ward contests and at-large block voting.
STV (or SNTV or CV) are not usually presented as an option.
List PR is often not possible because party labels are not used.
(But in some cases, such as Cincinnati's 1988 PR referendum, the choice was STV versus at-large Block voting. Cincinnati's reformers recognized that Black voters, pretty much disenfranchised under Block Voting, would get little redress under FPTP as they were dispersed across the city and no area held a black majority (so unless white voters were split among different parties to a great extent, black voters would still not have representation under FPTP. Past experience elsewhere had shown that under STV each substantial group would get its due share of seats, so reformers insisted on that being the alternative offered to voters to replace the existing block voting.
STV (or SNTV or CV) in an at-large contest would give some of the same benefits provided by at-large block voting (such as wide offering of candidates to the voter) without the wasted votes and disproportional results of block voting. STV/SNTV/CV also offers voters the opportunity to vote for whom they truly support and still see their vote used to elect someone, which is not as much the case in Block voting (or FPTP). (the only disadvantage of STV/SNTV compared to Block voting is under STV/SNTV the voter has to choose only a single candidate for whom to give first preference (or his or her only vote), while in Block Voting, voter can vote for several candidates without distinction.)
Total number of seats
the number of representatives elected to the body in total. (general rule is number of members in the lower house is the cube root of the total population.)
Electoral threshold
in MMP, a party will not receive any seats if its vote tally is not above the electoral threshold (unless some other go-around applies).
Type of vote used First past the post uses single X voting. Block voting uses multiple X voting, same as number of seats to fill. STV and Instant-runoff voting use ranked votes. List PR uses X voting. Limited voting uses multiple X voting, not as many as number of seats to fill. =================
as well,
Extra votes for some
in some systems, some voters have more votes than others, in some cases due to owning more property or owning property in two or more districts.
Where Block Voting is used in some districts and FPTP or IRV in other districts, some voters have multiple votes while others have just one.
Municipalities are most likely to have voters who cast different number of votes. They historically used property as eligiblity to vote, even allowing non-residents who owned property in the city to vote.
Also, they can choose to combine at-large seats (Block Voting) and single-member wards (FPTP). But this is relatively rare. Among single-tier Ontario municipalities in the 100,000 to 200,000 population range, only the City of Thunder Bay uses a combination system; five members of its Council are elected at-large (BV) and seven in FPTP wards. (see footnote)
Cardinal voting and other special systems
in some systems, simple X voting is not used but instead candidates are ranked or valued at different point values. All the rankings or valuations are sometimes added together, weighed at different rates, to arrive at what is thought to be a member who has more general acceptance. (this is a rated vote system, as opposed to a ranked vote system.
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a somewhat bewildering and overlapping collection of terms!
Explanatory footnotes: *The Seattle City Council is the legislative body of the city of Seattle, Washington. The Council consists of nine members serving four-year terms, seven of which are elected by electoral districts and two of which are elected in citywide at-large positions (throgh seat/post system (each seat is filled through separate contest) *The City of Thunder Bay (Ontario) uses a combination system; five members of its Council are elected at-large (Block Voting) and seven in wards (FPTP).
(note: 26 candidates sought the five at-large seats in 2018).
This configuration has been used ever since the City was created through an amalgamation in 1970. ================== from https://guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/Ward-councillors-or-councillors-at-large.pdf ======================= Main thesis: Exact overall proportionality is not possible under district-based or regional PR systems but definitely even a PR system with that failing would create more fairness and less regionalism than the system currently used in Canada. It includes some talk of STV and MMP and DMP. also discussion of trade-offs likely implicit in any future made-in-Canada PR system. ============================
STV the British form of PR STV was called the British form of PR, because under it voters elect individual candidates. This is unlike the party-list PR used in continental Europe, where merely party affiliation was polled and individual people elected by choice of the party involved. (some list PR (open-list list PR) allows votes to cast votes for candidates.) And in the British Empire, STV was the usual system used where PR was adopted. It was used in Malta, Ireland, Australia and Canada at both city and lower state elections. STV was also used to elect some British MPs at one time. STV is used rarely outside the British Commonwealth - Estonia and Nepal are among the rare examples. Other systems have been used in the British Empire. FPTP of course. Often Block Voting, where multiple members are elected in a district (but without transfers and with each voter casting as many votes as there were seats to be filled). It is said that five systems are currently used in UK, including at the city level. "The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality system, the single transferable vote, the additional member system and the supplementary vote."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=The%20five%20electoral%20systems%20used,system%20and%20the%20supplementary%20vote) ==================================
The election systems used in United Kingdom are:
Single-member plurality system is used for elections to the House of Commons (the UK Parliament), and elsewhere as well. Multi-member plurality system (Block Voting) is used in some local elections in England and Scotland (community councils). STV is used in Northern Ireland Assembly elections and in some local elections in Scotland (local authority councils). Supplementary Vote system is (or was) used in London mayoral elections. This is a combination of two-round voting and preferential voting.
Additional Member System (MMP) is used in Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, and London Assembly elections. FPTP used in district elections; additional members allocated regionally or at-large. Additional Member Systems (MMP) used in UK come in three variations: London Assembly elections - Mixed-Member Proportional system - Additional members added based on votes cast in one London-wide at-large district. 25 members. There are 14 geographical super-constituencies each electing one Member, with a further 11 members elected from a party list to make the total Assembly Members from each party proportional to the votes cast for that party across the whole of London using a modified d'Hondt allocation. May 2021 election -- 2.6M valid votes. Four parties took seats. Two parties (Labour/Labour Co-op (running for both Labour and the Co-operative Party) and Conservatives) took super-constituency seats, two other parties (Greens and Liberal Democrats) took seats through allocation of the additional members. No party took majority of the vote. No party has majority of the seats. Labour took 38 percent of the regional vote; Conservatives took 31 percent of the regional vote. Each took a larger share of the votes cast in the local district elections. FPTP pushed about 10 percent of the voters to vote for whom they were okay with but not their first choice. Four main parties took about 97 percent of the vote in the FPTP district elections, but only 86 percent voted for those four parties in the regional vote where voters voted for whom they truly wanted to see elected. The additional members allocated as per the regional vote (in a compensatory manner) reflected the support for the Greens and Liberal Democrats that was not reflected in the candidates successful in the district elections. Even so, 14 percent of the regional vote received no representation at all. (This is much more fair result than the last Edmonton city election where more than half the votes did not produce representation.) (info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_Assembly_election#Results) Scottish Parliament elections -- regionalized MMP -- Scotland divided into 8 electoral regions. 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), elected for five-year terms under the additional member system:
73 MSPs represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the plurality (first-past-the-post) system,
while a further 56 are returned from eight additional member regions, each electing seven MSPs. Voters cast two votes. More than 99 percent of the voters cast their district vote for the five main parties, but only 95 percent did so in the regional vote, where they had liberty to vote for whom they truly wanted elected. Four parties took seats in district seats. One more party was given representation through the additional members. Because additional members are not added based on overall voters but on the regional vote, there is some discrepancy between percentage of votes received and final seat count percentage. Scottish National Party won 40 percent of the valid votes overall but won 52 percent of the seats. Despite already holding more seats than its vote share warranted through district elections, it was allocated two additional members regionally. Central Scotland: nine districts The Scottish National Party took all nine district seats with between 52 and 59 percent of the vote in six district. but taking only minority of the vote (47 percent) in Falkirk East; 46 percent in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse; 49.9 percent in Uddington and Bellshill. Its clean sweep of the district seats being more than its vote share warranted, SNP was given none of the additional seats in the region. Labour, Conservative and Green were allocated the seven additional seats, but even so Labour was under-represented, being due about four sets but only allocated three. Conservatives and Greens were ever so little over-represented in the end in that region. In Highlands and Islands, SNP was given one additional member although it had taken six district seats and with its 40 percent of the regional vote was due only six seats (well, 6.46 seats) in the 15-seat region. This contributed to that party's overall over-representation. Welsh Assembly -- regionalized MMP -- Wales divided into 5 electoral regions. In elections for the National Assembly for Wales, each voter has two votes. The first vote is for a candidate to become the Assembly Member for the voter's constituency, elected by the first past the post system. The second vote is for a regional closed party list of candidates. Additional member seats are allocated from the lists by the d'Hondt method, with constituency results being taken into account in the allocation (the additional members are added in a compensatory manner). Regionally Wales is divided into three south districts, 1 North and 1 Mid and West (Senedd). Senedd has twelve members, eight directly-elected constituency members and four additional members. Four parties took seats here in 2021. Conservative won four seats in the FPTP elections and was due four seats so got no additional members. Plaid Cymru was due four seats, won three in FPTP so was allocated one additional member. Labour was due three seats, won one in FPTP so was allocated two additional members. Liberal Democrats was due one seat, won zero seats in FPTP so was allocated one additional member. No other party was due a seat under the d'Hondt method of seat allocation. Every party received its due share of the region's 12 seats. Again like with the Scottish Parliament, there are discrepancies between the seat counts of the parties and their vote percentages. Labour was due 22 seats (36 percent of the 60 seats overall) but received 30, including three additional members due to regional (but not overall) under-representation. The discrepancies were not so large - as no party received a majority of the seats, no party took a majority of the vote. ==================
Of the four systems currently used in UK, STV and the Additional Member systems are proportional. Until recently when Britain was part of the European Union, election to the European Parliament was conducted in a closed-list party-list system. Each country in the EU could determine how its members would be elected. However the system must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or the single transferable vote system. UK adopted a party-list system, where voters cast votes that allocated the seats to parties but the parties themselves filled the seat by naming individuals. But those elections are now no more with Britain leaving the EU. So British voters - no more intelligent than Canadians all in all, although they do speak correctly if you judge by British television - were able to handle a diversity of voting systems. They apparently mastered both ranked voting and X voting, cast both single and two votes with seemingly equal grace and aplomb, to all appearances looking with equal equinamity on their first choice or their back-up preference being used to pick the winners, whether in a district that elects a single member or a ward that elects multiple members, and taking obvious pride as residents of districts that elect mixed representation where possible under the various systems that are used as alternatives to the historic plurality systems. It seems likely that Canadian votes could do the same - should any government in the future grant them the right to do what they in referendum in PEI (2016) and BC (2005) once proved they wanted. Let's hope they get the chance to show they can do it sometime soon, just as they once proved they could do it before. At various times Canadian voters in three provinces have cast ranked ballots in provincial elections - Alberta and Manitoba under STV; BC under Alternative Voting. At various times, voters in five provinces - BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario - have cast ranked ballots in city elections. We know we can handle it. ======================= STV's deep roots in the British Commonwealth With FPTP and Block Voting, STV has deep roots in British Commonwealth countries. STV was used to elect government members in Tasmania starting in 1890s and has been used in elections to the Australian Senate since 1948. It is also currently used in election of local boards of government in New Zealand and a few other places in the world. For a short time around 1920 it was used in elections in Northern Ireland and is now again in use for elections of members of that body. (See Wikipedia: "Single transferable vote"). STV was also used in several Canadian jurisdictions, at both the city and provincial levels. The cities of Edmonton and Calgary elected their MLAs through STV from 1924 to 1956, when the Alberta provincial government changed those elections to use first-past-the-post. The city of Winnipeg elected its MLAs through STV from 1920 to 1955, when the Manitoba provincial government changed those elections to use first-past-the-post. Less well known is STV use at the municipal level in western Canada. The cities of Calgary and Winnipeg used STV for more than 40 years before city elections were changed to first-past-the-post or Block Voting. (In these plurality systems, a relative lead in votes over the contenders determines the winners, with no guarantee that they have the support of a majority of voters.) Eighteen other municipalities also used STV. This included the capital cities of BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan (Manitoba's capital Winnipeg was already mentioned). The 20 cities and other muncipalities used STV in about 100 elections during the 1918-1931 period. STV was also used in city elections in South Africa - Johannesburg and Pretoria - and for election of the Senate. ===========
False-majority government That kind of unfairness is an outcome common in Canadian elections. The same discrepancies between party seat counts and vote percentages would likely happen in Canadian PR elections. This is so if the pro-rep system used is of the party-list form such as additional members in MMP where proportionality would be established (to the extent that it would be) at the scale of provinces or sub-provincial regions. Another party-list format, Dual-Member (DMP) systems, envisions regions made up of more than one province. I am not sure how this would work when constitutionally we have to allocate seats as per provinces (the Senate clause). I think it would be difficult to formulate a system that produces exact overall proportionality within the Canadian constitution, especially if we want direct election of successful candidates by voters (the party-list format being generally disapproved of). So there has to be a trade-off. However, I think, we can come up with a made-in-Canada PR system that would ensure that a mixture of parties is elected in each province, anyways as much as the variety of votes cast and the number of seats each province is due allows. STV at the city level for example would ensure that each province has a mixture of parties represented. The province-based PR system that I proposed recently produces that as well. A mixture of representation in each province is important if we are to prevent the regionalism that now is causing national discord and a lack of voice for many in the national government. Note though that as long as we have district elections and judge only by first choice votes, some voters will see their votes ignored. The best we can do through one or another PR system is see that each of the main parties in each province has some representation in that province (even if the majority of votes in a district are ignored in a district election) and/or that the general sentiment of most of the voters are reflected in those elected locally through first or early secondary preferences (in a system using ranked ballots); and that local representation is preserved. I say preservation of local representation does not necessitate preserving the present single-member districts, but under PR local rep could be in multi-seat districts, a single district covering a small or moderately-sized city, say one with no more than 10 members. Even Dual-Member Proportional sees a doubling of the size of districts if the number of legislators remains the same and seats must be found for "the second candidate [in each district] [who is] elected by a process that ensures proportionality of the results." (Sean Graham, Reforming the Electoral System in Alberta"). Same holds true for MMP. To create additional members, the current districts have to be reduced in number and increased in size - unless the size of the legislature is increased in size. And STV depends on creation of multi-member districts. So preservation of the current districts - preservation of local representation as currently practised - is impossible under any imaginable PR system - unless the number of members overall is increased. Edmonton for example There are currently eight ridings with the Edmonton prefix but Edmonton-Wetaskiwin extends far outside Edmonton city boundaries so that would have to change under a city-based multi-member district. With increased fairness, rigid adherence to district sizes would be less important. Whereas currently districts are relatively equal sized, most votes are wasted in many districts. In the last election, two Edmonton MPs were elected with minority of the district vote - a Conservative in Edm-Centre and a NDP in Edm Strathcona. The majority of voters in these districts did not have their choice elected. Whereas districts may be equal sized, votes received by successful candidates ranged from 22,000 to 35,000, with the number of votes in a district that were ignored ranging from 36,000 to 16,000. An equal and consistent quota under STV would be 48,000 votes (428,000 votes divided by 9). Conservatives receiving about 230,000 of the Edmonton votes, they were due four of the city seats, not seven. At least one Liberal and a NDP would have been elected as well if Edmonton seats had been filled by a PR system. This would have been much more fair and would have prevented the artificial regionalism, caused by the current almost-total Conservative sweep across Alberta, that we are now presented with. under multi-member districts, more variation in representation per member would be accepted due to more fairness in vote results. STV has proven itself at being able to elect candidates that have support of high portion of the votes. Other PR systems do the same. So for example under STV, we can envision Edmonton as a multi-member district and in a new multi-member district of Wetaskiwin-Red Deer (created by putting together the old Red Deer-Lacombe and Red Deer-Mountain View districts with the portion of the Edmonton-Wetaskiwin that used to be outside Edmonton). STV has proven itself at being able to elect candidates that have support of high portion of the votes. So it is expected that with STV in eight-seat Edmonton district, 80 to 90 percent of the vote in Edmonton would be used to elect an Edmonton candidate who is the preferred candidate, even if not the first choice. with a new two-member district of Wetaskiwin and Red Deer RD-Lacombe Conservative 54,000 Cons 67,000 overall RD-MV 55,000 68,000 overall Edm-Wet 63,000 87,000 overall (estimated portion moved to new RD district: 32,000 Cons 44,000 overall total 141,000 Cons 179,000 overall Quota would be about 60,000. 120,000 voters would see their choice elected. Usually at least two-thirds of votes are represented by a STV election in two-seat district. Conservative vote in 2019 was more than two thirds in favour of Conservative candidates so still two Conservatives would be elected in the new two-member district. If instead the new multi-member city of Edmonton district was made into a seven-seat district, and the new Red Deer-Wetaskiwin district made into a three-member district, the new rural district would likely elect two Conservatives and one MP of a different party. The quota would drop to 45,000 (179,000 divided by four). The 19,000 Liberal votes, if helped by transfers of NDP votes and others, would be enough to take one seat, or conversely the 16,000 NDP votes, if helped by transfers of Liberal votes and others, would be enough to take one seat. The point being that overall proportionality is I think not do-able under Canada's constitution, just as it is not produced in Scotland's regionalized MMP. But if MMP, DMP or STV would be used in Canada, it would prevent regionalism and produce more fair elections. ====================== Voters can handle a change away from FPTP - and many are asking for a new system.
Let's hope they get a chance to show they can handle it, sooner rather than later.
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More terms and their definitions
Baily’s method – a variant proposal for single transferable vote (STV) voting, using a preference ticket option involving lists of candidates. The method also derived the necessary vote totals for each candidate by using cumulative voting. (See Baily 1869, also Droop 1881, p 36).
Borda count – a rate vote counting system (though often mistakenly classed as a rank vote system) invented firstly by Nicholas of Cusa in 1430, and again by the French mathematician Jean-Charles de Borda in 1780. In a Borda count voters mark all the candidates with integers from N (the number of candidates) down to 1 in descending order of preference. The numbers are then tallied as points, with the candidate with the highest total (or ‘Borda score’) being the winner. Another way of defining this rule is that each candidate is given a score equal to the total number of times that candidate is ranked over any other minus the total number of times that candidate is ranked under any other (see Geller 2005, p268). While resembling preferential voting in ballot paper appearance (with the significance of the digits marked on the ballot reversed so that higher numbers indicate stronger support), formally the method is a specific variant of cumulative voting, and thus technically a form of rate voting rather than rank voting. Put another way, as a voter’s support does not in any sense transfer from one candidate to another in any circumstance, the method does not belong to the preferential or ‘ranking’ class of voting systems. However, Borda counting also has the property that it reveals the ‘highest average ranking’ of each candidate (on the premise that equal integers are the basis for the rankings), which can be seen as a useful criteria for assessing the relative merit of candidates[v]. If a ranked comparison of many candidates is desired, the Borda scores of each candidate may be referred to determine a ‘Borda ranking’ of the candidates. The Borda method is often favoured by voting theorists, but it does suffer from the serious defect that it is easily manipulated in real competitive elections by voters deliberately placing the strongest rivals to their favoured candidate in the lowest places on their ballots, even if this is insincere preferencing. Another defect is that Borda is not ‘clone independent’, in that parties have an incentive to nominate multiple similar candidates, thus generating additional Borda score points for all the closely related candidates. See also Nanson’s method (a specific method of elimination used in preferential voting which makes use of candidate’s Borda scores), the modified Borda count, and the Quota-Borda system
Bucklin voting – (also Grand Junction voting): an unusual method of voting which has the appearance of being a preferential voting method, but is actually a rate voting method. Voters cast ballots by filling out ordinal preferences for each candidate. If a candidate has a majority (50%+) of formal votes on the initial count of first preferences, they win the seat. If not, the number of second preference votes marked for all candidates on all ballots are added to the tallies for each candidate (as if they were an additional set of single rate votes). The target for victory remains the number of votes equal to a majority of original number of formal votes cast. If 2 or more candidates exceed this target after the addition of second preferences, the winner is the candidate who has the highest new total. If no candidate reaches the target, the 3rd preference votes marked on all ballots are added in the same manner, and the same victory rule applied. Addition of successive preferences continues in rounds until a round occurs in which the target is reached by at least one candidate. A variant of this method allows the target for victory to increase at each stage of counting to a majority of the new total of votes, but this option has the problem that it is possible that no candidate will in fact reach the target even after all preferences are added to the totals. The use of either compulsory (full) or optional preferencing is possible for Bucklin voting. The method was developed in America in the early 20th century, and used initially for local elections at the town of Grand Junction, Colorado. It was subsequently adopted in a small number of US States, but was later repealed or ruled unconstitutional by courts (in the judicial ruling in Minnesota, on the dubious basis that voting methods in which voters indicate votes for multiple candidates (a feature of all preferential or rank voting methods) was not permitted by the State constitution).
common quota – a quota, however determined, which has the same value across all the electoral divisions of an electoral system. (The single quota used for an electorate with no electoral divisions may also be regarded as a common quota.) A common quota is a form of fixed quota. The key virtue of such a quota is the uniformity of vote value it confers on each elector, subject only to any remaining variation in salience resulting from voters casting ballots which favour candidates who win very low levels of support from other voters.
[CPO see below]
delegated ranked choice voting – a possible form of single transferable vote (STV) voting in which the transfer of votes from eliminated candidates is conducted not by using the expressed preference rankings of the individual voter, but instead at the direction of the eliminated candidate themselves. Ideally each candidate would publish their order of next preferred candidates in advance of the electorate voting, to allow voters to consider whether they approved of each order. The ballot design therefore does not require the marking of preferences, but simply a single vote for one candidate, ostensibly resembling plurality voting. The proposition was raised by Oregon commentator Kristen Eberhard of the Sightline Institute in early 2018. Cf Gove system, which deals with surplus transfers rather than eliminated candidates.
delegated voting – any situation where the electoral rules require, or permit, a voter to delegate her vote to a political party, including cases where a voter may (or is required to) adopt a party ticket as her vote (such as the Australian Senate ‘above-the-line’ voting option).
effective votes – votes cast in an election which actually result in the election of the primary desired candidate to an assembly. The rate of effective voting – presumably a percentage ranging up to, but not normally reaching, 100% – is therefore a metric of actual representation.
extent [of representation] – a term of measurement used to indicate the proportion of the electorate who are directly represented in an assembly following an election. The measure can also be used in regard to single-office positions, such as the election of presidents. The measure is subject to degrees of intensity, and in addition may be measured against different definitions of the ‘electorate’ (i.e.: all citizens, all eligible voters, all enrolled voters, or all actual voters). In the most intense sense, a voter may be said to be directly represented if a candidate whom they supported (in preferential voting systems, this being their first preference choice) is elected to the assembly. Alternatively, they may be said to be ‘party-represented’ if in their relevant electoral division at least one candidate from the political party of the candidate who received their first vote is elected to the assembly. An even wider sense of party representation may not even require a member elected in the relevant electoral division, but may count any party member elected nationally.
In preferential voting systems a voter may be said to be preferentially represented if, after the distribution of preferences is complete to the point where all seats in the assembly are determined, the preferences on their ballot have been used in the election of at least one member to the assembly.
[or just preferences to the n place are considered as evoking representation,
or the voter may be considered to be represented if he or she marked a high preference for a candidate who was elected even if the vote was not used to elect them]
In regard to the electorate, the measure may be taken against the entire ‘entitled’ population of enfranchised people (which can only be an estimate), or the known population of enrolled people, or the known subset of enrolled people who actually voted.
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first preferences – in any preferential voting system, the indications of a voter’s most preferred candidate, numbered “1” on ballots. A candidate who achieves election by having more than 50% of all first preferences is thus said to ‘win on first preferences’.
flexible district PR – a proposed Canadian variant of single transferable vote (STV) voting, also initially termed rural-urban PR (or RU-PR), put forward by FairVote Canada as part of the parliamentary inquiry held during 2016 for reform of the Canadian electoral system. The system involves a geographic mix of multi-member electoral divisions where members would be elected by STV voting together with some single-member divisions, intended especially for the low-population regions of Canada, where members would be elected by either plurality or preferential (AV) voting. Finally the party-proportionality of the regional electoral areas (or alternatively, of the whole jurisdiction) would be supplemented through a second tier of allocated seats (probably fairly few in number), which would be awarded to parties in a manner similar to MMP systems.
A further variant of the flexible district PR proposal termed riding-centric-RU-PR was put forward by academic Byron Weber Becker and British Columbia electoral reform advocate Anthony Hodgson as part of the electoral reform process in British Columbia in 2018.
In May 2018 the government of British Columbia announced that flexible district PR would be one of three options offered at a November 2018 plebiscite on reform of the electoral system for electing the provinces Legislative Assembly.
first-past-the-post – (FPTP; the phrase may be hyphenated, but more usually is not): the common name given to the plurality voting method when used in single member divisions, and therefore also known as single-member division (or district) plurality (SMD, or SMD plurality) or single-member plurality (SMP).
The term is widely used in Britain, Canada and the other nations still using the system. The expression has been generally criticised as an illogical description of SMD plurality elections because there is no conceptual ‘post’ that candidates must pass during the counting of votes.
The origins of the expression lie in Britain in the 1880s, where it was adopted from usage in the horse racing industry. Horse races in that era were often subject to protests which might alter the result for the purposes of prizes and gambling payoffs. However one accepted form of betting, particularly in the less regulated ‘suburban’ races, was the ‘first-past-the-post’ bet, which paid out simply on the horse that passed the finish line first, regardless of any disqualifications or penalties. By the 1880s alternatives to plurality voting (both in its multi-member and single-member district forms), including cumulative voting and preferential voting (including STV) were being widely debated by politicians and other electoral experts. It appears that the expression first-past-the-post was taken up in electoral science by analogy with the horse-racing usage, connoting that SMD plurality was the voting method that lacked any means of correction to ensure fairness in the outcome of the election ‘race’. It may be relevant to this linguistic history that by this era, at least in the United States, elections had come to be termed ‘races’.
Plurality voting in single-member divisions is widely assumed to be the ‘original’ British voting system, but in fact while plurality vote counting has been used in England (and later the United Kingdom) for House of Commons elections for several centuries, the generalised use of single member divisions only dates from 1884. Voting in the UK had hitherto mainly used plurality voting in two-member divisions, with voters having two votes, the practice thus amounting to the block voting method. Britain retained the use of a few multi-member constituencies until they were finally discontinued the late 1940s.
Earlier, single-member division plurality voting was mainly the norm in electing the legislative assemblies of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada from the late 18th century, a policy which continued after 1841 in the United Province of Canada.
[Actually every province has used multi-member districts to elect some or all of their members, Quebec prior to 1867, all others since, one as late as 1990s. also 11 federal ridings at various times elected two members, one as late as 1970.]
In the legislative assemblies of the Australian colonies that were established from the 1850s onwards there were a mixture of single- and multi- (mainly two-) member electoral divisions.
The use of multi-member divisions was largely extinct – and thus replaced by SMD plurality – in the Canadian and Australian jurisdictions by the early 20th century. [not true]
From 1919 onward Australian federal and state parliamentary elections then adopted the practice of preferential voting.
Elections for the United States House of Representatives also initially used a mix of single-member and multi-member districts (the latter generally known as ‘at-large‘ elections) until an initial attempt by the federal Congress to universally require single-member districts was made in 1842. The United States did not finally legislate for universal single-member divisions until 1967.
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fixed quota – a pre-determined number of votes (or proportion of the vote total) used in a proportional election such as one using the STV method, or in a process of seat allocation. The most common forms of quota used as fixed quotas are the Hare quota and the Droop quota. However any pre-determined number – indeed any arbitrary number – can be used as a fixed quota
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floating total – the total number of members elected in a multi-member electoral division in an electoral system which does not set the number of elected members in advance. Multiple-division electoral systems using common quotas will result in floating totals. Systems using a floating total will more successfully avoid the variations in vote strength uniformity that are caused by concentration distortion, and will reduce the variations in salience which inevitably affect voting systems which fix in advance the number of members to be elected.
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Ostrogorsky’s Paradox
– a possible phenomenon, apparently undemocratic in nature, arising from the simultaneous election of an assembly expected to decide upon three or more known policy choices, at the same time as allowing the elected assembly members to choose a majority government from political parties which have positions on those issues. Simplified, the scenario is as follows. Suppose that there are two parties, the ‘Yes’ party and the ‘No, party, and three key issues in the election (A, B and C), for each of which there is a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ position. Suppose also that one third of the electorate supports the ‘yes’ position on issues A and B, but – with greater intensity – supports the ‘no’ position on issue C, as a result of which they decide to vote for the No party at the election. Another third of the electorate likewise supports ‘yes’ on issues A and C, but more strongly supports the ‘no’ position on issue B. Similarly the final third of the electorate supports ‘yes’ on B and C, but is strongly ‘no’ on A. At the election, whilst two-thirds of the electorate supports the ‘yes’ position on all three issues, the No party wins election in a landslide, committed to opposing the will of the electorate on every issue. The paradox is less likely to manifest the more complex the number of parties, the range of positions offered by those parties, and the number of issues involved. In addition, the division of the community into the uniform blocks of opinion needed to generate the paradox is fairly abstract. The articulator of the problem, Moisey Ostrogorsky, conceived his theory watching English and US two-party politics in the late 19th century, when electoral analysis – especially in the UK – tended to regarded each election as being concerned with a limited number of current issues, rather than the large number of issues present in most modern elections.
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sequential elimination – [bottom up STV]
(also Hare elimination or Ware elimination, both archaic): in preferential voting, the staged vote-counting practice of eliminating the candidate with the lowest vote total and transferring their votes to other un-eliminated candidates, and repeating this step until only two candidates remain. If a candidate has won 50% of the formal vote at the first count of votes, or if after any stage of the counting they achieve that target (or at least achieve 50% of un-exhausted votes if the optional preferential method is being used), they can be declared elected and further eliminations are strictly unnecessary, although vote counting often proceeds to determine a final two-candidate tally. The process is also used in the single transferable vote (STV) voting system, where candidates are eliminated until the required number of votes are allocated to successful candidates in full quotas (or alternatively, until the number of remaining candidates is equal to the number of seats to fill). The concept of sequential elimination was proposed by Thomas Hare in regard to the STV system he publicised in 1857 and 1873, and was proposed by William Ware for use in single-member elections in 1870
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single non-transferable vote – (SNTV); a form or rate voting in which each voter expresses support (typically by marking an ‘X’ on the ballot paper) for just one candidate, but from which multiple members are elected, with the seats being awarded to the N candidates with the highest tallies of votes. Strictly, an election for a single position can also be classed as an SNTV form of voting, but such elections are more normally referred to by the terms plurality voting or ‘first-past-the-post’, while the term SNTV is used in relation to multi-member elections.
single transferable vote – (STV); in the US and Canada also recently termed ranked choice voting (although in the US that term refers to preferential voting generally and thus also includes reference to such voting in single-member divisions); in the US also sometimes termed choice voting; in Australia often termed the Hare-Clark system, and also sometimes termed PR-STV; also known to specialists as the quota-preferential method of proportional representation).
Whilst in the broadest sense a reference to a ‘single vote’ that is ‘transferable’ might refer to any preferential voting system, the term STV universally refers to the electoral method of preferential voting for candidates in multi-member divisions based on quotas for election, transfers of surplus (ie: above-quota) votes from elected candidates to other candidates (according to each voter’s ranked preferences), and likewise the transfer of votes following the sequential elimination of the least successful candidates.
STV was the origin of the term ‘proportional representation’, which initially meant that the influence of every individual voter’s vote was equal to (or ‘proportionate’ to) every other vote. The term later came to acquire a second meaning in relation to political parties, this second meaning being concerned with whether the numbers of seats that parties held in an assembly after an election was mathematically proportional to their aggregate voter support at the election.
STV has been highly popular with electoral system specialists since the late 19th century, and has been the official policy of the UK and Australian electoral reform and proportional representation societies throughout their existence.
STV forms a family of methods rather than a single uniform system. The main elements of the method were invented and/or promoted in the 19th century by Thomas Hill (Birmingham, 1819-21), Rowland Hill (London, but for use in Adelaide, 1840 [actually ranked votes were not used in the 1840 Adelaide election]),
Carl Andrae (Denmark, 1855), Thomas Hare (London, 1857-73), and John Stuart Mill (London, 1861 onward)
Thereafter Catherine Spence (Adelaide, 1861 onward [-1910]), Henry Droop (London, 1868-84) and Charles Dodgson (London, 1884) promoted the use of the system in defined multi-member electoral divisions only. John Gregory (Melbourne, 1880s) provided enhanced counting approaches for use in the transfer of preferences. Enhancements in the 20th century include conceptually neater counting methods (made possible by computing technology) proposed by Brian Meek (Britain and France, 1969) and later refined by others. Ballot paper design choices that avoid favouring any candidates unfairly were proposed by Neil Robson (Tasmania, 1979).
The method is used in Eire, Northern Ireland, Malta, for the Australian Senate and various Australian State assemblies, for local government elections in Australia and Scotland, and in many US municipalities. STV was used to elect part of the Legislative Assemblies of Alberta and Saskatchewan from the 1920s to the 1950s, and the whole of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales in the 1920s.
See also Hare-Clark system.
surplus transfer – (also surplus distribution): the practice in single transferable vote (STV) voting systems of transferring a number of votes credited to an elected candidate (which can include first preference votes, and/or votes received through previous surplus transfers from other elected candidates, and/or votes received through transfers upon the elimination of other candidates) to the ballot paper’s next most preferred (un-eliminated) candidate, so as to leave the first-mentioned candidate with precisely one quota of votes.
Under STV counting rules the first candidate (referred to here as the ‘elected candidate’ for clarity) is said to be ‘declared elected’ at the counting stage at which they accumulate a quota or more of votes, and the next stage of counting must always be the transfer of the surplus, prior to any further candidate eliminations. (If at the first preferences stage, or at any later counting stage, two or more candidates simultaneously achieve a quota, the surpluses are distributed from such candidates in turn in descending order of their vote totals.) The technique is integral to the process by which STV counting distributes votes among candidates to achieve proportional representation.
Various techniques can be employed in relation to which ballot papers are examined as part of the transfer, and what weight of votes are allotted to them. Firstly, the ballots to be used for the transfer might be based on random selection, as was proposed by Thomas Hare in his original model. A variant form of random selection is the ‘Cincinnati’ random approach, in which every 11th ballot in shuffled piles of ballots is selected, until the required number is selected. Alternatively, in determining the recipients of the transferred votes the scrutiny may examine all the ballots, or may examine some pre-defined subset of the ballots, which will require some form of weighting to ensure that the total value of votes transferred is the correct number. The most basic option, generally referred to as ‘inclusive’ approach, is to examine all the ballots credited to the elected candidate, regardless of which stage of votes or preference transfers they were received. A convenient alternative is to use the ‘last parcel’ of votes which – when received by the elected candidate – raised their vote tally to exceed the quota.
There are variant ways of weighting the ballots in inclusive or last parcel procedures. The primary method is the fractional method, which simply applies a fractional value to each ballot equal to the ratio of the surplus to the whole pool of votes concerned: by this means the ‘value’ of votes equal to the quota ‘remains’ with the elected candidate while the ‘value’ equal to the surplus is distributed to other candidates. Note that if the ballot pool making up the elected candidate’s tally includes any ballots transferred to that candidate from prior surplus transfers at earlier stages of counting, the fractional value of those specific ballots should be taken into account, such that ballots which have passed through two or more surplus transfers will have diminishing weightings equal to the product of all the surplus transfer weightings applied to them.
Finally, an alternative approach designed to avoid the need for ballot weighting is the Wright method, which is based on the concept of iteratively recounting the entire pool of ballots afresh after each elimination of a lowest-ranked candidate, rather than of progressively accumulated vote tallies through multiple’ stages’ of vote counting.
system of government – a system by which a nation (or other jurisdiction) provides for the exercise of the executive power of government, and establishes its relationship with the role of the national parliament. The traditional division of systems is into two broad classes, parliamentary and presidential. These can be subdivided into four more detailed categories, each of which features a different balance of power between an independent chief executive and control by a national assembly. In decreasing order of parliamentary control of the executive these four categories are the representative-parliamentary system, the plurality-parliamentary system, the premier-presidential system and the presidential system. Presidential systems vary greatly in the effective degree of democratic control that citizens have over their government. For completeness two categories of non-democratic system can also be defined: the party state system and the monarchical system. Many nations have nominal or ‘constitutional’ monarchies, but for practical purposes these may be classified with one of the parliamentary systems.
threshold MNTV – a majoritarian version of multiple non-transferable voting in which each voter may cast up to as many rate votes as there are candidates, and any candidates who achieve a threshold of 50% of the average number of votes cast per voter (that is, the total number of votes cast by all voters divided by the maximum number of votes each may cast) is allocated a seat, with any remaining seats filled by some alternative method (often through a second ballot). The result is that every elected member will have been ‘approved’ by at least half the voters. This system is used in many municipal elections in Switzerland.
threshold – a formal minimum requirement – in terms of votes won at an election – for parties to be eligible to win any seats. Formal thresholds (as distinct from implicit thresholds) are actual rules eliminating from the distribution of seats all parties which fall below the relevant vote target. In related cases, used in parallel voting systems such as in Germany and New Zealand, an alternative threshold rule may also deem a party eligible to be allocated party list seats if it wins a set minimum number of local district seats. Another form of threshold is that used in the two-round runoff system in France, where (if there is no majority winner in the first round) all candidates who achieve a 12.5% threshold (not merely the candidates with the two highest votes) may advance to the second round.
Ticino – an Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland. To address political unrest in the period 1870-1891 a form of representative voting was granted which constituted the earliest attempt to implement a system of party list seat allocation. The process was essentially that which became known as the free list system.
Tideman’s STV – see CPO-STV.
Tideman’s method – one of the pairwise comparison winner determination rules, designed to declare a winner where no Condorcet winner is present. Nicholas Tideman’s method orders the pairwise victories from strongest to weakest and ‘locks’ them in order, ignoring those that contradict stronger victories (ie: as the victories are examined in order, any later victory which contradicts an earlier one is ignored). Tideman’s method then picks as the winner the candidate who has locked victories over all other candidates. (The Dodgson and Simpson methods very rarely choose a Condorcet loser, but Copeland, Schulze and Tideman never do.) [xxxiii]
tiered systems – any form of electoral system which uses two or more levels of electoral division as the basis for electing members to, or allocating seats in, an assembly, but using the same type of electoral system at each level. Such systems should not be referred to as ‘parallel’, ‘mixed’ or ‘composite assembly’ systems, as these terms indicate the use of different electoral methods for different components of the assembly. The most common form of tiered system are those using seat allocation systems at both a regional and a national level, for example South Africa, Denmark and Sri Lanka. Some systems may be described as having ‘integrated tiers’, in which the counting procedure for lower levels directly links to that used at higher levels, a key example being the system used in Austria. Papua New Guinea elects its assembly in two groups (local district MPs and also regional governors who become ex officio MPs), with the same limited preferential voting method used for both groups.
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two-round runoff – a form of preferential voting for single positions, commonly used to elect presidents, and also occasionally used to elect members to an assembly in single member divisions. Two-round runoff is closely equivalent to the contingent vote preferential voting method, but is conducted over two rounds of voting on different dates. Ballot papers are marked in the first round as in plurality voting. If a candidate secures 50% of the formal votes in the first round, they are declared the winner. If no candidate achieves 50%, the two highest-placed candidates contest a second round of voting, at which the highest-placed will then be the winner.
Unlike the contingent vote by a single ballot, the pool of electors who participate and cast formal votes may be different in the second round from that which voted in the first round. Voter participation (turnout) is often lower, as supporters of excluded candidates do not all wish to express support for either of the remaining candidates. Voter participation fatigue may also be a factor, as may be the situation that the results of the assembly election as a whole are largely determined by first round results and publicly known, if that is the case. Conversely, the election of a national president on the same dates may act to keep turnout strong.
Variations of the threshold for entry into the second round are possible, such as with the elections to the French Assemblée Nationale, where the threshold is 12.5% of the registered voters in each electoral division, often allowing three and sometimes four candidates (hypothetically as many as seven) into the second round, which is then determined by plurality voting.
Second rounds are also used in the threshold variety of plurality voting, in which a minimum threshold (usually of 40% or 45% of the formal vote, or perhaps of a lead of 10% over the next highest candidate) is required to win at the first round of voting. If the lead candidate fails that requirement then a second round of voting is held between the two leading candidates. Argentina uses this threshold method to elect its presidents.
At present the use of the two-round runoff system is common for electing national presidents. The use of two-round runoff for parliamentary elections is mainly associated with France and with several former French colonial territories, although Byelorussia, Uzbekistan and Bhutan have also adopted it. It was used for elections to the New Zealand House of Representatives in 1908 and 1911. The system is also used in the US states of Louisiana and Georgia at present
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Uniform quota
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vote wastage – the extent to which votes cast in an election fail to elect representatives. The term is primarily used in commenting on elections using plurality voting in single-member electoral divisions (first-past-the-post), where the extent of wastage is very high, although for comparative purposes vote wastage rates can also be calculated for electoral systems with much better representation outcomes. Vote wastage can be calculated as the sum of all votes cast for unsuccessful candidates (which therefore fail to elect a representative) together with votes cast for the sole successful candidate in excess of the number needed to win the seat (that is, votes in excess of the number of votes cast for the largest runner-up candidate). See also efficiency gap
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Ware elimination – see sequential elimination.
Warren’s method – a specific method of managing the vote transfer calculations in STV elections, developed by CE Warren in response to Meek’s method.
wasted vote – the converse of effective vote: any vote which has no effect in determining the election of successful candidates, at least at the final stage of counting of an election determining whether one candidate is elected and another not. In plurality elections, any vote which is cast for neither the winning candidate or the runner-up is generally regarded as a wasted vote. The expression highlights the diminished influence of voters whose true preference is to vote for a minor party or independent in an electoral contest where major parties (normally just two) dominate the contest. Such voters are under pressure to cast tactical votes for one of the dominant parties/candidates.[xxxiv]
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winning on preferences – in a preferential voting system, a victory for a candidate who did not achieve a first preference win, but wins after the distribution of preferences.
within quota – a criterion for evaluating quotient rounding methods of apportionment. An apportionment of seats to a state is said to be ‘within quota’ if the exact number of seats allocated to the state is either the integer above or the integer below the exact value of that state’s quotient.
Woodall free riding – a concept, or voting tactic, occurring in STV voting, in which in specific circumstances a voter can strategically maintain the full value of their vote in the later stages of the vote counting compared to other voters. A Woodall free rider is described by Markus Schulz as “a voter who gives his first preference to a candidate who is [expected] by this voter to be eliminated early in the count even with this voter’s first preference. With this strategy this voter assures that he does not waste his vote for a candidate who is elected already during the transfer of the initial surpluses.” Woodall free riding does not occur if the specific Meek, Warren, or Wright STV counting methods are used.
[the concept might also not even matter under STV that uses the whole-vote transfer method.]
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Wright method [easier variant of Gregory STV vote counting]
– a variant approach to vote counting in STV voting systems, described by Australian psephologist Antony Van der Kraats, named by him after earlier Australian psephologist Jack Wright. The system aims to replace the standard method in which the vote count is progressed through multiple stages, in each of which votes of varying fractional values accumulate in each candidate’s vote tally. Under the standard approach, ballots that have passed through two or more surplus transfers will have been repeatedly weighted and have small ‘values’ attributed to them. An academic debate between electoral system designers (Meek, Warren and others) over which pool of ballot papers to use, and which corresponding weights to allot them, led Van der Kraats to propose an approach which escaped the perceived difficulty altogether.
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In the Wright method each of potentially several vote counts nominally have only a single stage, consisting of the identification of candidates with quotas, and only one round of surplus transfers from those quota-holding candidates (potentially generating additional quota-holding candidates). Where a vote count fails to produce a number of candidates with quotas equal to the number of seats available, a single candidate (that with the lowest vote tally) is eliminated, their votes transferred to the next preference on the ballots in the usual manner, and a fresh ‘single round’ count of first preferences and surplus transfers is conducted. The process continues until the number of un-eliminated candidates begins to approach the number of available seats, and a vote count round must eventually occur where the vote tallies for each candidate followed by a single round of surplus transfers is sufficient to produce the required number of seat-winning candidates. The winning candidates are then all ‘declared elected’ at that final count.
This description gives the appearance of considerable extra counting effort, but in fact the actual counting and tallying work is more or less identical to the standard method of counting, and really requires only a different presentation of vote tallying tables (and computerisation of the tallying data makes this a simple task). The Wright method has the additional benefit, compared to the standard counting method, that it can be used neatly with the optional preferential balloting rule, with the result that the quota would be recalculated automatically for each vote count to take into account exhausted ballots.
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people
Spence, Catherine Helen: (1825–1910); Scottish-born Australian politician, journalist, author and teacher, prominent in the movement for womens’ suffrage and other social work relating to women and children. She was Australia’s first female political candidate (1897). Spence was a consistent advocate of proportional direct election using Thomas Hare’s single transferable vote (STV) system. In 1861 she proposed the modification to Hare’s system whereby the electorate would be divided into multi-member divisions.
In 1893 Spence made a presentation on STV to an event at the World Exhibition in Chicago, helping to promote proportional representation to political reformers in the Unites States. In 2018 the federal electoral division in Adelaide formerly named Port Adelaide was renamed in her memory.
Brittannnica
in the 1890s she developed the so-called Hare-Spence system of proportional representation, which was put before South Australia’s parliament for many years.
a) Catherine Helen Spence One of the best known idealists was Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910), a renowned novelist, critic, journalist, preacher, lecturer, philanthropist and social and moral reformer. On one of her visits to Britain she ‘made the acquaintance’ of Thomas Hare and John Stuart Mill. Spence formed an Effective Voting League in South Australia and helped with the establishment of a similar organisation in New South Wales, but was unsuccessful as the first woman candidate to be a South Australian delegate to the Federal Conventions. As early as 1861 Spence published a pamphlet ‘A Plea for Pure Democracy: Mr Hare’s Reform Bill applied to South Australia’, which admittedly ‘did not set the Torrens on fire’.34 Spence considered her modified Hare-Spence method of PR was ‘fair and just’, ‘honest’, ‘educative’, ‘moral’, ‘cheaper’, and would ensure that ‘minorities [would] be adequately represented’. 35 For Spence, minorities were necessary in Parliament, to ‘watch the majority and keep it straight’.36 With her interest in civics and electoral reform, Spence considered proportional representation even more important for women than obtaining the vote. It was even thought better to be an ‘unenfranchised woman’ than a ‘disenfranchised voter’.
Spence contended that only ‘effective voting’ (being proportional representation) could right the injustices of the established system of ‘defective voting’, which polarised the political community and robbed Australian parliaments of their deliberative potential.37
(b) Edward Nanson The technical dimension of PR was given sophisticated analysis by Professor Edward Nanson, who was appointed to a Chair of Mathematics at the University of Melbourne in 1875. Nanson was not, however, the only mathematician focused on the subject, others included J.B. Gregory and Professor W. Brown. Nanson, though, was known as ‘the expert’s expert’38 and published several papers as an electoral reformer of the school of Thomas Hare and J.S. Mill, with a selection of ideas published in newspaper articles for the Age and Argus. In 1899 Nanson published his own tract titled Electoral Reform: An exposition of the theory and practice of proportional representation, which expressed misgivings about the widely employed single member plurality district system.39 At Federation Nanson strongly advocated the adoption of PR for the Senate and the preferential (alternative) voting system for the House of Representatives, considering the Senate (with each State being polled as one electorate) ready made for the PR voting system. With the backing of George Turner and Alfred Deakin, two former Premiers, Nanson backed legislation to elect Victoria’s first Senators by PR and preferential voting for the first House of Representatives members.
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St Just: Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (1767–94); French military and political leader, elected to the French National Convention in 1792, and a leader of the government of the First Republic. In 1893 he proposed to the National Convention that the electoral system for the whole nation should be the single non-transferable vote (SNTV), which if adopted would have been the first national usage of a system of proportional representation; his proposal was “quickly surpassed by the violent opposition of Robespierre” (Hoag and Hallett 1926, 163)==========
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Perfect proportionality -- is it even possible?
In a foundation study Douglas Rae set up a model of perfect proportionality (equal ratio of vote shares to seat shares) to ascertain how the various list systems on the European ‘continent’ deviated from the model. The deviations arose chiefly because of the different allocations of final seats in each count. The d’Hondt list form which has been applied in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, the home of its inventor Victor D’Hondt, was found to handicap smaller parties. The Lague method practiced in the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark has worked to the advantage of ‘middle sized’ parties. A separate procedure applied in Italy served to facilitate the gaining of seats by ‘small parties’.19 Italy, in 1993 following a referendum, adopted plurality (first past the post) in single member districts for 75 per cent of seats in its Senate and Chamber of Deputies. In Australia the list system has not been a popular version of PR. In the late in the late 1970s and early 1980s list PR was sometimes mentioned in Western Australia but it did not gain legislative passage (see Appendix One).
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