An initiative, asking the voters of Cincinnati if they wish to use the Single Transferable Vote system for electing city council members, will be on the November 2008 ballot. The initiative sponsors were told on August 27 that they have enough valid signatures. “Single Transferable Vote” is the term for Instant-Runoff Voting when multiple winners are to be elected. For some reason, the newspapers in Cincinnati call it “Proportional Representation.”
It’s not quite accurate to describe the Single Transferable Vote (STV)as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) with multiple winners. There’s a bit more to it than that. STV transfers surplus votes to ensure that every vote counts equally, and that every vote helps to elect someone. This usually results in parties winning seats in close proportion to the votes they receive. This is not usually true with IRV. Political scientists consider STV a proportional voting system, and IRV a majoritarian, non-proportional system.
“Single Transferable Vote” is NOT a “term for Instant-Runoff Voting when multiple winners are to be elected”. Single Transferable Vote (abbreviated STV, and also called “Choice Voting”) is an election method in which, like in IRV, voters vote by ranking candidates instead of just voting for one or more. However, the way the ballots are counted in STV is different from in IRV, with the result that STV provides proportional representation rather than majority takes all. That’s why the newspapers in Cincinnati call it “Proportional Representation”, because it IS a proportional representation election method.
(The main difference between STV and IRV is that the number of votes needed to win a seat is much less than the number of ballots cast, and the extra votes for winning candidates are transfered to lower choices on the same ballot, not just the votes of losing candidates as in IRV. Consequently, in an STV election where a group of voters supports a slate (or a party) by giving its candidates all of their top rankings, if that group is X% of all voters, their votes will elect candidates to fill roughly X% of the seats. If all or almost all voters similarly vote straight tickets, that is proportional representation of the slates. If a significant proportion of voters vote split tickets (e.g., 1st and 3rd choices from slate A, 2nd from slate B and 4th from slate C), then it’s harder to say what it means for results to constitute proportional representation.)
It will be exciting to see this referendum take place. Cincinnati had STV-PR elections for about 30 years and faced numerous attempts to repeal it, finally succeeding in the 1950’s. During its use it achieved rough proportionality of seats/votes between the parties. If I remember correctly there was a local third party, the Charterites, who were in favor of keeping PR.
The PR-STV system is used to elect all city councils in Ireland, in Northern Ireland, and in Scotland, and to elect the city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Unlike the winner-take-all system, PR means every vote counts.
I agree that it is not accurate to describe STV as merely IRV for multiple seats. The reverse is more accurate; IRV is STV for a single seat.
However, I do agree with Richard that the term “proportional representation” is not an entirely accurate description of STV.
The strength of STV is that it allows each voter to decide which factors to prioritize: political party, geographical affinity, identitarian affinity, etc.
Since each voter can prioritize different factors in their ranking of individual candidates, the results may not be “proportional” along the lines of any one factor. This is a good thing.
Single-district voting prioritizes geographical proportionality above all else. Party-list voting prioritizes party proportionality above all else. STV lets the voters decide.
It’s not perfect. No election method is (sayeth Kenneth Arrow). But it is significantly better.
STV was used in NYC for some years. It led to the election immediately after WW2 of two Communist Party members, Peter Cacchione and Ben Davis. The system was sacked as the Cold War set in. Whatever one thinks about CPUSA, the moral of the story (as Rob in Cal suggests)is that STV is good for third parties and equal access–in other words, good for democracy
Political science textbooks normally classify Single Transferable Vote as a form of Proportional Representation, with a party list system as the other form of PR.
STV and Instant Run-off Voting are both forms of “Preferential Voting”
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes for each winner (via candidate rank order lists – winner surplus or losers) ALL voters can get represented.
Single member gerrymander areas — aka political concentration camps — are now Stone Age super-dangerous — producing the arrogant powermad leftwing / rightwing gerrymander MONSTERS in the gerrymander Congress and all 50 gerrymander State legislatures.
American history since 4 July 1776 is one giant EVIL gerrymander BIG LIE by the party hacks – of genocide for American Indians, slavery, racism, New Age economic class warfare, etc..