The Single Transferable Voting system uses multi-member districts and each voter casting only a single vote. These two in combination ensure mixed representation roughly proportional to party standings at the district level.
It prevents no one group to take all the seats in a city for example.
With each voter casting only one vote, there is no overlap from voter to voter. Even on first count, where first preferences of each voter are tabulated, most of the voters can see themselves in the leading candidates, looking at the same number of candidates as the open seats. Most of these will eventually be elected under STV.
Already, if the STV process stopped there, as it does in Single Non-transferable Voting, the result would be fairer than under FPTP.
And then transfers are used to polish the representation.
Surplus votes are transferred from winners. This does not affect the amount of voters that see themselves in the leaders. In fact some of the votes will be transferred to candidates who are not leaders.
In each transfer votes are transferred to all, or almost all, other candidates still in the running. This is testament to the full liberty given to voters to rank the candidates by whatever criterion they choose to use.
Other transfers will arise when the least-popular candidates are eliminated. The eliminations are done so that votes are not simply ignored by being stuck with candidates who are not going to be elected. The eliminations thin the field so that the most popular of the remaining candidates can be seen, and declared elected.
The STV process does not allow votes to be thrown away if at all usable. They are gradually more and more concentrated behind the leading candidates. The group of leaders may change as the transfers occur and different candidates rise to join the group at the top, as determined by vote totals.
As votes concentrate behind winners, the proportion of votes behind the leaders grows. And when the leaders one by one surpass quota or when they are the only remaining ones after the eliminations of others, they are declared elected. If there was one last elimination that reduced the number of remaining candidates to the number of remaining open seats, the votes belonging to the last eliminated candidate is not transferred.
These are the only wasted/ignored votes other than those that are found to be un-usable during course of transfers. Some votes were found to be unusable if they had no back-up preferences, or the back-up preferences marked were all for candidates already eliminated or elected. If a vote is marked only for an eliminated or elected candidate, it is non-transferable, as that candidate cannot receive more. It is then defined as "exhausted."
If marked for a candidate already elected, the voter can have the satisfaction of knowing that he supports at least one of the district's elected representatives.
Under STV, most voters in a district - sometimes more than 85 percent - have that satisfaction, while under FPTP sometimes as few as 32 percent of the voters in a district have that satisfaction.
In FPTP elections, as many as a third of the seats in a general election filling 60 to 300-plus seats are won by candidates who have support of less than half the voters in the district.
There were a large proportion of "satisfied" voters in the STV elections in Edmonton and Calgary in the old days. From the 1920s to the 1950s Edmonton and Calgary MLAs were elected through STV. In those days, very many voters were "satisfied," and very few votes were wasted.
Here are the stats of a few of those elections.
Notice the large proportion of voters "satisfied" in first and final counts.
1926 Edmonton
In First count, leaders had 49 percent of the vote behind them.
This compares well with FPTP elections, where a third of the seats are won by candidates with less than half the votes behind them.
This includes one candidate (Lymburn) who had 17 percent of the vote.
In final count, when all seats are declared filled, winners had 79 percent of the vote behind them for sure, with an unknown portion of the nine percent that were exhausted votes being marked in their support as well.
The only known ignored votes were those of Bowen, 2212, 12 percent of the vote.
1930 Edmonton
In First count, leaders had 65 percent of the vote behind them.
This includes one candidate (Lymburn) who had 15 percent of the vote. (the quota had dropped to 14.3 percent due to higher District magnitude (6 being elected).
In final count, winners had 81 percent of the vote behind them for sure, with an unknown number of the 8 percent that were exhausted votes being marked in their support as well.
The only known ignored votes were those of Prevey 2284, 11 percent of the vote.
1935
In First count, leaders had 61 percent of the vote behind them. This compares well with FPTP elections, where a third of the seats are won by candidates with less than half the votes behind them.This includes one candidate (Howson) who had 25 percent of the vote (the quota was at 14.3 percent due to 6 being elected).In final count, winners had 83 percent of the vote behind them for sure, with an unknown number of the 4 percent that were exhausted votes being marked in their support as well.
The only known ignored votes were those of Hall – 4721 votes, 13 percent of the vote.
1940
In First count, leaders had 63 percent of the vote behind them. This compares well with FPTP elections, where a third of the seats are won by candidates with less than half the votes behind them.
This includes one candidate (Manning) who had 23 percent of the vote (the quota had risen to 17 percent due to smaller District Magnitude (5 being elected).
In final count, winners had 80 percent of the vote behind them for sure, with an unknown number of the 6 percent that were exhausted votes being marked in their support as well.
The only known ignored votes were those of Hall – 6035 votes, 14 percent of the vote.
CALGARY
1926
In First count, leaders had 76 percent of the vote behind them. This compares well with FPTP elections, where a third of the seats are won by candidates with less than half the votes behind them.
This includes one candidate (McGillivray) who had 30 percent of the vote (the quota had risen to 17 percent due to smaller District Magnitude (5 being elected).
In final count, winners had 79 percent of the vote behind them for sure, with an unknown number of the 8 percent that were exhausted votes being marked in their support as well.
The only known ignored votes were those of McClung – 2621 votes, 13 percent of the vote.
1930
In First count, leaders had 75 percent of the vote behind them. This compares well with FPTP elections, where a third of the seats are won by candidates with less than half the votes behind them.
This includes one candidate (Irwin) who had 23 percent of the vote (the quota was at 14.3 percent due to 6 being elected).In final count, winners had 86 percent of the vote behind them for sure, with an unknown number of the 1141 exhausted votes, 5 percent of the whole, being marked in their support as well.
The only known ignored votes were those of Parkyn – 2296 votes, 9 percent of the vote.
The vote-counting process was obscured because election officials did not make separate pile for exhausted votes. They left the un-usable votes with the candidate who had been eliminated or elected. Also on 10th Count Weir was eliminated when (Conservative) Farthing's surplus should have been transferred. That was the last recorded count, as with Weir's elimination the number of candidates dropped to one more than the number of remaining open seats so Farthing was left with his surplus.
On the unrecorded 11th Count, Parkyn was eliminated, leaving McGill as the last surviving candidate and the recipient of last open seat. Parkyn's votes not transferred, as all seats filled anyway and all votes would have gone either to McGill, who was already elected, or to exhausted pile (if there had been one).
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In Alberta's use of STV (which is fairly typical),
we see:
- the times when the complicated transfers that are done when surpus votes are trasferred were actually few in number
-- only two in each election in each city (Edmonton and Calgary) on average.
- in Alberta the few times when those kind of transfers would have been done, they were done without fractions by transferring whole votes of just the surplus.
The times when fractional transfers would be done or when they were done using whole votes in Alberta's experience, there was little effect on results - this is not reflection of the transfers or the method of transferthat was used but due to the relatively few number of times that those surplus vote transfers were done.
in STV, transfers are done when - a candidate is eliminated due to being un-electable - no math is used here except just to move ballots from one candidate to another - or when a candidate is elected with surplus votes and then only if - the surplus is of enough voters to make a difference - there are still un-filled seats, - and there are two or more candidates still in the running more than the number of unfilled seats.
if all three conditions apply, a transfer is done which can use somewhat complicated math. In Alberta's experience, these three conditions all applied only two times each election in each city on the average. and then the necessary transfer was done with whole votes in Alberta, not the fractions as done under Gregory method.elesewhere.
looking at Alberta prov STV elections, we see that actually the "complicated" math-reduction method had to be used much fewer times than people might think
Edmonton and Calgary
90 MLAs elected through STV 1926-1955
(Medicine Hat used STV in 1926 but not worthy of attention -- only three candidates went for two seats)
90 MLAs elected in Edmonton and Calgary 1926-1955
(not including by-elections where AV was used)
Theoretically each time a candidate is elected, his or her surplus votes are to be transferred
but a transfer is not done if the surplus votes are not enough to make a difference, or if all the seats are already filled (so never is the surplus of the last elected person transferred, for instance) or if the unfilled seats will be filled right away becaause the number of remaining candiates in the running (after this person's election) are equal to the number of remaining unfilled seats.
and even if a transfer is needing to be done, the mathemtical reduction calculation is only used if the number of votes that bear a usable back-up preference surpass the number of surplus votes.
19 times the surplus was transferred without math
(transferable votes did not exceed the surplus) 16 Calgary /3 Edmonton
40 times no transfer was done (either would have had no effect, or seats already filled or certain to be) 19 Calgary/21 Edmonton
31 times the surplus was transferred using mathematical reduction (in Alberta the whole-vote method was used) 9 Calgary/22 Edmonton
so these numbers tell us that in 16 STV contests, 8 in Calgary and 8 in Edmonton between 1926 and 1955, only 31 times was mathematical reduction calculation resorted to.
an average of only two times in each city in each election did the "complicated" mathematical reduction method have to be used.
it might be different if voters are required to give very complete rankings but in Canada the one-third of seats filled through math reduction stat was the case.
the point being that if math-reduction transfers are used as seldom as that, it does not matter what method is used to derive them, whether Gregory or semi-random whole-vote method is used, as far as most of the seat results go.
so there would be little difference in results, whether the simpler whole-vote method or the more complicated fractional method is used.
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Thanks for reading.
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keywords: electoral reform, proportional representation, Canadian politics
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