STV is not that complicated. Most of its value is not from transfers (which can be a cause of intricacy) but from single voting in multiple-member districts.
Single voting in MM districts is brutally simple - it even can be done with X voting. Without transfers, it is called Single Non-Transferable Voting, once used in Japanese elections.
STV's transfers merely polish the result of the first count as produced in the STV vote-counting process. The first count is what would be used in SNTV to elect members.
Some people don't understand this. They think that if STV transfers have no effect, STV produces the same result as FPTP. But real world practice shows different.
These three elections demonstrate that.
1944 Calgary STV election (as part of provincial election)
candidates of three different parties elected,
three of the five MLAs belonged to an opposition party.
Two were Social Credit, the government in power at the time.
Transfers made no change to the front runners in the first count,
Still the end result was very proportional.
Transfers in fact confirmed that the front runners in the first count were the choice of most of the voters proportionally.
1955 Edmonton STV election (as part of provincial election)
candidates of three different parties elected,
four of the seven elected candidates belonged to an opposition party
Three were Social Credit, still the party in power
Three of the elected MLAs had not been among the front runners in the first count, an unusually large portion of such in a Canadian STV election.
Two Liberals and a CCF-er were among the front runners but were not elected in the end,
Their place was taken by a different Liberal (with more general approval (showing how STV is candidate-based, not party-based)) and two SC-ers. These two SC-ers joined a front-runner SC-er who was elected in the first count.
The rise of the SC candidates shows how transfers refine the results of the first count, in this case, to fine-tune proportionality of representation within the district as measured by party votes.
So one change was made based on a candidate's personal appeal, not party considerations; the other change upped the number of SC seats to produce proportionality of representation within the district as measured by party votes.
Both types of changes happen through STV transfers - if it is the will of voters as dictated in advance in their back-up preferences.
1955 was last provincial election in which PR was used.
1959 Edmonton FPTP election (as part of provincial election)
FPTP elections in nine new city districts
Candidates of just one party were elected -
all were of the Government party - Social Credit, although the SC candidates received barely more than a third of the votes cast in the city.
That explains why the government changed the electoral system - to benefit itself.
This actually answers the next question most people ask after they learn that -
a. PR-STV was used successfully for 30 years in AB and MN, and
B. each time it produced mixed and roughly-proportional representation in each city where it was used --
Why did the government change the electoral system - why did it return us to FPTP?
To benefit itself. -------
Single voting in MM districts has several advantages over FPTP single-winner elections:
- It gives voters a wide choice of candidate to choose from.
- it gives the voter freedom to vote for whom they want elected, without consideration of whether that person has a chance of being elected, because the voter knows that the vote can be transferred to a back-up preference, if marked, if necessary and if possible. Back-up preferences are not used if the recipient of the back-up preference has already been elected (or eliminated) or if the first preference is so popular that the vote stays where it is until the end. Thus the transfers eliminates the need for voter mis-representation known as strategic voting.
- It guarantees mixed representation in each district where it is used - unless a single party has support of more than about 75 percent of the voters, not often the case,
- it ensures that most of the votes will be used to elect someone
- it ensures that a variety of parties will be represented, and that the most popular candidates of each party are elected.
- it allows the voter - whether his or her vote was used or not - a choice of which local rep to turn to for help,
-and it has many more benefits as well.
Single voting in single-seat district - no matter what system is used to elect the successful candidate - means that no more than one group can be represented, often this is a minority, and voters have few choices when voting and after election only one choice as to local rep to turn to.
FPTP allows minority to elect the sole winner.
IRV ensures that a majority of the votes (or majority of votes still in play at that point in the count) will elect the single winner. It is not proportional. No other groups but that one will have representation.
This basic imbalance of FPTP and IRV can be addressed through top-up seats under MMP.
STV elects proportionally at least as per the votes cast within the district and within the limits of the District Magnitude (the number of seats elected in a district). Ten seats is the most that were used in an STV district in Canadian history.
STV can also be made fairer by top-up seats although I have not heard of it happening. Perhaps because it is not needed.
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