An important benefit of Preferential Ballots (meaning pretty much Alternative Voting, also known a "Instant-Runoff Voting) is that a minority group cannot benefit from vote-splitting among a larger group.
As a 1914 write-up stated
"An election that has a multitude of candidates means that a minority group is trying to elect an unworthy man by dividing the opposition to him.* But the preferential ballot makes it impossible for a small minority to triumph over an unorganized and divided majority.
It involves no possible favoritism or injustice to any voter for all have exactly he same privilege. The essence of the remedy is in removing all restriction for the voters at the polls and allowing them the fullest possible expression of their will."
Unfortunately there was in 1914, and is today as well, a difference between the method of elections at party conventions and the election itself.
"The delegate whom the voter sends to a convention may vary his choices in successive ballots as much as he pleases, but in the election itself, the voter himself is allowed but one choice, however inadequate it may be as an expression of his will."
Parties that have only a minority of the voters in a district will under FPTP put forward just one candidate and facilitate the nomination of many candidates of the opposing camp. In this way, according to the 1914 essay, they "easily divide the opposition and elect their men when it may be that three-fourths of the people are opposed. Thsi happens again and again.
But with preferential ballots all this is changed."
The opposition candidates would back each other through vote transfers and win the day.
The minority party would perceive their lack of success under preferential ballot system, and "their only chance to win is to muzzle the voter at the polls so that there cannot be a full, free fair expression of their will."
This is where the dirty tricks come in...
All quotes are from "Preferential Ballots" (University of Oklahoma Quarterly Bulletin Sept. 1914)
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* Monto: But sometimes it just happens that many run, with no conspiracy involved.
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Thanks for reading.
(See my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.)
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