Presentation of Single Transferable Voting elections can be tricky for those not in the know. Here's some tips.
Calling it either STV or proportional representation is fine. STV is district-level proportional representation, although different from party-list pro-rep. in certain ways It is more fair and also less fair than party-list pro-rep.
But it is not "proportional vote." There is no such animal (despite what a certain City of Edmonton website says).
STV elections include election of one or more candidates in the first count (usually) and election of others in subsequent counts.
First-count popularity does not make or break a candidate. But is important information as a poll of voters' sentiment.
The quota, the minimum required - at least technically- to win a seat, is important. It not only ensures election of one or more very popular candidates in the first count. It also determines how many votes will be transferred away as winners' un-needed surplus.
So here's some advice on how to present an STV election in such a way as to capture the process to the reader.
Do provide number of seats to be filled.
Do provide number of valid votes.
Do provide quota.
Don't mark candidates as elected with the amount of vote that they had in first count.
None of that lasted.
Those elected in first count lost their surplus so did not end up with that vote count.
Those elected in subsequent counts had their vote tally increase through vote transfers before election whether the election would be through achieving quota or surviving until the number of candidates remaining was decrease to the number of remaining open seats.
The order of vote tallies on the first count gives general picture of who will be elected in the end but it is usually changed through vote transfers.
So two lists are needed in even the simplest of presentation of a STV election:
- list of the candidates and their first count vote tally (hopefully in order of popularity)
- list of those elected, with no vote tally necessary. If they are left with quota, they once had more than that; if they end with less than quota, still they were more popular than the others who were eliminated.
If left with more than quota at the end because all seats are filled before surplus taken away, it is oddment - not important to the election. They are not more popular than those elected earlier whose vote tally has been reduced to quota, although their higher vote tallies would indicate that to the reader. They are the last elected, therefore the least popular of the successful candidates.
By giving two separate lists, you hint at an intervening metamorphosis - all the counts, vote transfers and eliminations that took place.
A more complicated and clearer picture is presented through a brief recap of the order candidates were elected and on what count.
A most comprehensive presentation is a chart showing vote transfers on a count-by-count basis. Probably not necessary except to the most interested people.
At the end it may be useful to present how mixed and proportional the elected representation is.
something like:
Elected were three Liberals, two Conservatives and one NDP, in rough proportion to their popularity in the first count.
The Green Party's first-count votes were not enough for quota. Most of them were transferred to aid the election of ...
An A-1 description would add something like this:
86 percent of the votes were used to elect the six MLAs of the district in the end.
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