History and use of the single transferable vote

Single Transfervable Vote has been used in many different local, regional and national elections - as well as in various other types of bodies - around the world. This place describes the most significant instances and notes any special history of features.

Australia

Australia uses two forms of STV, usually referred to within Australia as the Hare-Clark System and Proportional Representation. Both systems require voters to rank all of the candidates on the ballot, eliminating the possibility of exhausted votes.

The Hare-Clark System is used in Tasmania's House of Assembly and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Legislative Assembly. This is essentially the system described above using the Droop quota (not the Hare quota), but candidates' placements are randomised by Robson Rotation rather than grouped by party. Casual vacancies are filled by countback.

STV or proportional voting is the system used in the Australian Senate and the Legislative Councils of New South Wales, Victoria (from 2006), Western Australia and South Australia. This system is counted in the same way as in Hare-Clark, but group voting tickets are used. Casual vacancies are usually chosen by a parliament, though they may be required by law or convention to select a nominee of the out-going member’s party.

Each form has its pros and cons. The Hare-Clark system with Robson Rotation is advocated on the grounds that voters know who they are voting for as they must fill all their preferences, that each party's candidates compete with each other and the effect of 'donkey voting' is reduced because of the randomised ordering. The alternative system is advocated on the grounds that informal voting is reduced because only one number need be written; on the other hand, it greatly increases the potential for tactical voting by parties as they both have more information about the ballots and direct control of a larger percentage of the vote. In the Australian Senate elections, nearly 95% of voters use the group voting tickets instead of ranking their own preferences.

Canada

STV was used in Canada in the Calgary and Edmonton ridings of the Alberta province from 1926 to 1955. Other Alberta ridings had the option of using STV or First-past-the-post (FPTP) , and alternated between the two, however all ridings reverted to FPTP in 1955.

Provincial elections in Manitoba were conducted by STV from the 1920s until 1958. The city of Winnipeg elected ten members in this manner, while all other constituencies elected one member by instant-runoff voting. Civic elections in Winnipeg were also conducted by STV.

The Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform established by the British Columbia government surprised many when it developed an STV electoral model called BC-STV and recommended it to the electorate.^[1] In the ensuing electoral reform referendum held on May 17, 2005, BC-STV achieved 57.7% Yes support. This did not give it the 60% province-wide support set by the government for the referendum outcome to be automatically binding, though the simple majorities in 77 ridings (of 79) far exceeded the 48 ridings that was also a requirement. Due to the evident support for electoral reform, the re-elected BC Liberal government announced in the Throne Speech on September 12th that the public of British Columbia would get a second referendum on STV in November 2008. In the interim, the Electoral Boundaries Commission will be convened and instructed to design new boundaries for both FPTP and STV with a final report coming out in the spring of 2008. Both supporting and opposing sides of the referendum campaign will receive government funding to help educate the public in time for the November 2008 referendum, after which the winning system will be used for the next provincial election on May 12th 2009.^[2]

Ireland (Republic)

STV is used in the Republic of Ireland for all elections. However, Irish presidential elections and most by-elections elect only one candidate and so reduce to instant-runoff voting. The Irish Constitution specifies a minimum size of 3 seats for Dáil constituencies; the current maximum is 5. Senate panels, however, have up to 11 seats.

Although efforts to introduce STV across the UK had been abandoned, STV was adopted for use in local elections in Sligo in 1918, while Ireland was still a part of the UK, and then extended to all Irish local elections. STV was then used in the Irish elections of 1921, and subsequently adopted for all elections by the new Irish Free State in 1922. Attempts by Fianna Fáil governments to replace STV with FPTP were defeated in referendums in 1959 and 1968.

Malta

STV applies for all elections in Malta. However, top-up seats (similar to the additional member system) may be added in the national parliament to ensure that a party with a majority of first-preference votes wins a majority of seats. This was a response to the controversial election in 1981 when the Nationalist Party won 51% of the first-preference vote but the Labour Party won a majority of the seats.^[3] Some subsequently accused Labour of having gerrymandered the 5-seat constituencies: 8 had narrowly split 3:2 in its favour, while 5 had more widely split 3:2 in favour of the Nationalists. The top-up rule was also invoked in 1987 for the benefit of the Nationalists and in 1996 for the benefit of the Labour Party.

The Maltese electorate largely does not take advantage of the cross-party voting opportunities provided by STV. Almost all voters give preferences to all the candidates from one of the two major parties, but do not give preferences to candidates from the other party. Third parties, meanwhile, get minimal support. The effect of this voting pattern is similar to a tight two-party open list PR system simultaneously using STV within each party to decide its representatives whilst using the indicated first preference candidate's party as the voter's preferred party. Because of the transfer behaviour of the voters, each party can stand many more candidates than there are winners in total without being adversely affected. Strangely, some candidates stand and are elected in more than one constituency, leading to vacancies filled by countback.

New Zealand

New Zealand used STV for the first time for district health board and some local authority elections in October 2004.^[4] New Zealand has chosen STV by Meek's method. In recent elections, ballot papers contained ballots for multiple local government elections, some of which were conducted by single-winner FPTP, some by plurality at large, and some by STV. Due to low voter turnout, the high number of invalid votes and the long time taken for the result to be declared, the Justice and Electoral Committee of the New Zealand Parliament has undertaken an inquiry into the use of STV in New Zealand.

United Kingdom

In 1917, the Speaker's Conference in the United Kingdom advocated the Single Transferable Vote for 211 of the 569 constituencies in Britain and instant-runoff for the rest. Although the House of Commons voted in favour of the proposals five times, the House of Lords continually rejected it until the nationwide effort was ultimately abandoned in parliament.^[5]

STV was adopted for Irish local elections, for the Irish elections of 1921 and for the Northern Ireland general election, 1925 but was abolished in Northern Ireland in the late 1920s by the devolved parliament. It was reintroduced there after Direct Rule in 1973, and remains in use for local, Assembly and European elections, though not for elections to the House of Commons at Westminster.^[6]

England does not use STV for public elections, though it had been in use for some university constituencies in the UK before 1950. In Scotland, after the passage of the Local Governance (Scotland) Act on June 23, 2004, all local governments will be using STV to elect their councillors in 2007.^[7] In Wales, the Richard Commission recommended changing the electoral system for the National Assembly for Wales to the Single Transferable Vote in March of 2004. However, in the white paper Better Governance for Wales published on June 15, 2005, the UK Government rejected Richard's recommendation to change the electoral system.

United States

STV enjoyed some popularity in the United States in the first half of the 20th Century. Twenty-two American cities have used STV for local elections. Notably, New York City employed STV in 1936 as a method for breaking the corrupt political machine of Tammany Hall dominating the city. After World War Two, harsh campaigns against STV were carried out after women, blacks, and political minorities such as Communists and urban Republicans began winning seats, even though they only constituted a minority group in government. After STV's removal and subsequent reversion to FPTP in New York in 1947, the Democratic Party immediately regained near unanimous control of municipal elections with Tammany Hall quickly returning to political dominance until its ultimate downfall in the mid 1960s.^[8]

Currently the only official governing bodies that use STV to elect representatives are the City Council and School Committee of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The community school boards of the City of New York continued to use STV until the school boards themselves were abolished in 2002. The city of San Francisco recently considered multimember STV in a referendum, however this effort failed and the city instead uses districted instant-runoff.

Single Transferable Voting has become increasingly used at American universities for student elections. As of 2005, the schools of Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Vassar, Reed, and Whitman all use STV, and several other universities are considering its adoption.

NGOs

Many non-governmental organisations also use STV. Most Australian political parties, unions and peak business organisations use STV. All National Union of Students of the United Kingdom, Cambridge Union, and Oxford Union elections and those of their constituent members are under the system. It is used as well by ESIB – The National Unions of Students in Europe. It is used in several political parties for internal elections such as the British Liberal-Democrats and all the British Green Parties. It is also used to elect members of the General Synod of the Church of England. The UK Royal Statistical Society [9] uses STV with the Meek method to elect their council.

The Object Management Group (OMG) uses STV for their Architecture Board (AB) elections.