Voters' choice under STV - each major party runs a multiple-candidate slate in districts

The vote in STV goes to one candidate at a time. so the vote is not muddied. it just in some cases travels around before finding a final spot. But these movements are in accordance with directions pre-marked by the voter.

In many districts, the major parties do run more than one candidate. The transferability of votes means you do not need to strategically nominate.

And votes can go across party lines, so even if a party runs just one, votes can have vote go to similar candidate of another party or to another candidate of a similar party, if desired.

Ireland 2024              FF FG    SF GRN labor Solidarity Renua IFP libty nat. aontu     II  IND.

in Carlow Kilkenny     5 seats

candidates                 3    3       1    1        1        1            1            1    2

elected                        2    1      1    1

FF and FG had choices and their candidates took many votes.

Thus 44,000 of 74,000 voters had choice of candidates of their chosen party.

Cavan 5 seats                                                                                                       

candidates                3    3            3    1                  1                          1  1       1          1       1 4 

elected                       2    1            2      

SF, FF and FG had choices, and their candidates took many votes.

Thus 56,000 of 69,000 voters had choice of candidates of their chosen party.

so much more often than not, the voters did have choice of candidates of the preferred party slate.

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Just as in FPTP or under any voting system other than approval voting, you cannot know how much the voter likes one option over another just by a single mark.

same as in STV's  series of stepped back-up preferences.

But STV does not force voter into any arbitrary stepping of opinion any more than others - it only reveals how the other systems show so little info., the others being simple on/off choice

at least under STV, you can tell if a voters marks a straight party ticket or votes along other criterion. 

there was case of three-corner contests where the sentiment of the voters concerning a war or something was revealed by whether voters mostly voted along  war or peace lines outside of the party labels. And that was useful to the government to better reflect voters' opinion.

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STV of any sort produces more fairness because it is a scientific based system where candidates' vote tallies can be compared, and the most-popular elected whether by taking quota or by relative plurality at the end.

use of MMDs means electorate broken not at all or into only a few large chunks.

and candidates within each chunk being compared to each other.

Instead of one candidate getting a lucky break and being elected with less than a third of one percent of the votes overall while in another district, winner has more than one percent of votes overall.

things like that happen under FPTP.

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few PR systems above city level use at-large districting.

(NSW uses state-wide districting for its legislative council (Senate) but that is unusual.

most list PR systems use DM of less than 20, which is perfectly workable under STV as well.

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Michael Gallagher Comparing P.R. Electoral Systems. Quotas, Thresholds, Paradoxes Majorities

common DM under PR:

7 is about average for DM used in Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Spain and Switzerland

14 is about average for DM used in Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden p. 485

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but any use of MMD decreases that shattering of the electorate that happens under single-member districts, and decreases chance of unfair results.

illustration:

FPP 36 districts

PR (list or STV) perhaps 4 districts of nine, hopefully based on pre-existing geographic units --cities, counties, etc..

still some districting but much more fairness and more flexibility.

and when population shifts, simply add or take away one seat,

no re-districting required.

plus or minus ten or 20 percent from district to district much more flexible by thousands of votes when MMDs used, but also any variation is spread over more seats so appears more equal and fair.

say 1M voters 36 seats

FPP: median district size 28,000 so acceptable range is 22,222 to 33,600

MMD DM-9: median 252,000 so acceptable range is 202,000 to 302,000

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