If people are worrying that voters would be much expected to do to much under STV, then perhaps Indirect STV (AKA the Gove system) would work as the happy medium between full STV and typical X voting.
Voters would still simply mark one X same as under FPTP and that vote would go at first to just one candidate. But if that candidate was un-electable or if he or she took a seat and had surplus votes - a quota would be calculated and put to use for this - the vote could be transferred to another candidate to be put to use there and transferred again and again until hopefully arriving at some place where it is needed.
The transfer(s) would be conducted according to what the candidate announced earlier - so voter would in effect be delegating the candidate to move the vote as the candidate wants. The voter would be forewarned as to where the vote might go if the vote was placed on that candidate, so the use of the vote would be as known as if the voer had marked the indicated back-up preferences themselves.
Here's an interesting article on Indirect STV, a different form of PR/ a diff form of STV -- indirect STV
(the article is on the Sightline Institute (various reforms including ER in the U.S. Northwest)
many articles that may be of interest to proportionalists can be found on the institute's website: Democracy - Sightline Institute )
Perhaps discussion of Indirect STV applies to ER in Canada.
Maybe in the discussion of STV there is too much emphasis on the ranked voting and the transfers that are conducted to some votes - and not to others. The talk of ranked voting as all-important can led to some confusing it with IRV or simply being led to believe that ranked voting is all-important with no recognition of the importance of single voting in multi-member districts.
Really all we need for fair voting is MMDs or at-large, single voting and a way to economically transfer votes from non-electable candidates or those elected with surplus votes to others. Transfers can be done even if you don't have ranked votes. Such is done in Indirect STV, as I show below.
Party-list PR does do equivalent of transfers among those on party list when party vote is pooled. But votes can never leave the party pool. And the other problem is party executive sets the order on the list. Voters cannot in some cases vote for individual candidates and seldom do they mark 121 preferences when ther are 121 candidares on the ballot, as required to mark full preferences on the "beach-blanket ballots" they are sometimes forced to use - they often shortcut by marking their preference for a party list offered on the STV ballot (the above-the-list option).
Indirect STV would still allow votes to vote directly for candidates same as under FPTP or STV, but votes then could be transferred (even across party lines) as is done under STV but without use of ranked votes, instead of being wasted as happens under FPTP.
With Indirect STV there could be very large DM - the outside limit put on DM under STV (maybe 21 seats in a district) would possibly not have strength. and voters would not resort to above-the-line voting party-list voting on the ranked ballot as happens in Australia where the work of the voter is thought to be too much for usual STV preference-marking.
First Past The Post uses X voting but seldom has more than eight or ten candidates. With just two candidates in the running, one or other will take majorty of he vote. But as you see three or more candidates, using non-transferable votes means there can be considerable waste and unfairness - under FPTP it has happened that a candidate with just 18 percent of the vote was elected.
Recently a record was set by having 48 names in the ballot in the Winnipeg South Centre by-election (June 2023) - 48 candidates running for a single seat. Voters seemed to be able to mark their single X well enough even with that many names on the ballot. The large ballot was something of a stunt to show how silly single member districts are. But the point I take is that X voting works even with that many names. Six candidates ran for parties (including the Rhinoceros party), and 42 ran for Independents, none of them getting more than a hundred votes. Despite the many names on the ballot, one candidate did take a slight majority of votes to win the seat. (Worse unfairness occurred in Toronto in 2014 when in Ward 16, 16 candidates ran for the seat, and all but two got more than a hundred votes, no one took more than 18 percent of he vote, three took between 13 and 18 percent. The winner won with just 18 percent of the vote, leaving 82 percent of the votes cast un-used to elect anyone.)
In some provincial STV elections in Winnipeg there were as many as 43 names - but generally to fill 10 seats the number of candidates was much fewer - 21 to 27 were the common range of sizes of ballots in the 1927 to 1945 period. This was a system that did not use above-the-line voting - preferences for candidates had to be marked individually or not at all. (there was no requirement for full preferences.)
Group Ticket Voting (GVT) was a shortcut once used in Australia but now above the line voting apparently has (mostly) supplanted it. it is different than the delegating that would happen under Indirect STV because under Indirect STV the vote is transferred from individual candidate to individual candidate (if it is transferred at all) while under above-the-line voting the vote is used to help elect the top party name on the list then the next, even if the voter did not particularly want to support that individual candidate(s) in that order.
Having a larger DM would lead to more proportional results than under STV where usually fewer than ten were elected in a district.
It is noted that larger DM worsens proportionality where non-proportional system is used, while on the other hand, larger DM improves proportionality where fair voting is used.
(Farrell and McAllister, The Australian Electoral System, p. 33: "As is well known, in the case of non-proportional systems, the larger the 'district magnitude' (that is, the more seats in a district) the more disproportional the result (Precisely the reverse relationship exists for proportional systems.),and therefore the easier it is for larger parties to sweep the board [all the seats in a city] in a block vote system" compared to single-winner FPTP.
Larger DM means that fewer votes are wasted as the un-used quota where Droop is used, and also that the quota (the number of votes needed to take one seat) is lower.
But where non-proportional (FPTP or Block voting) is used, a one-party sweep of a city's multiple seats are possible. Just look at Edmonton in 1921 when the Liberal took all the city's seats with 34 percent of the vote under Block voting, or 1959 where the Social Credit party took all the city's seats with less than half under FPTP also. In 1959 the sizable CCF vote was cracked by the boundaries of the city's nine seats.
In Calgary in 1959, the non-SC opposition managed to take one seat under FPTP. so comparison of Edmonton in 1921 with Calgary in 1959 shows that Block voting with district of five produced result worse proportionally than FPTP in a city split into seven districts.
there is a Wikipedia article on "Indirect STV"
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