The voters of Cincinnati, Ohio, rejected Single-Transferable Vote by a margin of 46.5% to 53.5%. The voters of Davis, California rejected a proposal to make Davis a charter city by 45.7% to 54.3%. If Davis were a charter city it would be free to implement its own system of electing city officials.
However, Instant Runoff Voting passed for city elections in Memphis, Tennessee, with 70%. It passed for city elections in Telluride, Colorado, with 67%.
Another Instant Runoff Voting measure passed with just over 67 percent of the vote in Telluride, Colorado.
Thanks; I’ll add that to the main body of the post.
What’s “Single-Transferable Vote”?
Also, Oregon rejected Top-Two.
It’s Instant-Runoff Voting applied to offices for which there are multiple winners.
In the U.S. (only) the single transferable vote is more commonly known as “choice voting”. For more on this, see FairVote’s discussion and this Flash animation.
Washington also conducted its first election under Top 2. In Washington, a senator, and 2 representatives are chosen from each legislative district, with the representatives chosen by position (rather than subdistricts or in a multi-member race). This means that there can be a R v. R race for one representative position, and a R v D race for the other, with an identical electorate, and the same office. Turnout for the single-party races is running about 90 to 95% of the two-party races, with around 80% of the minority party voters expressing a preference between the two majority party candidates in two-party races.
The 3 independent/no preference candidates also performed credibly in the 30-40% range.
“Single Transferable Vote” means that each voter casts a single vote; but that vote may be transferred to other candidate(s) if it is not needed to elect a candidate; or would be wasted on a defeated candidate.
Each voter indicates his 1st preference, 2nd preference, 3rd preference, etc. Depending on the implementation, a voter may only be required to express a 1st preference, so that they can mark an X like they do now; or they may be required to express more preferences.
You could think of your ballot as indicating, I want Chuck to be elected; but if he can’t be, I want Ralph to be elected; but if not him Cynthia; and if not her, Bob; and then John, and then Barack. If you were in Colorado you might rank all 18 on-ballot candidates – and possibly more if you can rank write-in candidates.
The marketing name in the United States for the variant where only a single officer is elected to office is “Instant Runoff Voting”. STV applied to a single office, is actually a degenerate form, and its mechanics are easy to understand.
The first stage is simply to tabulate all the voter’s 1st preference (who they most want to have elected).
If no candidate receives a majority, then the ballots cast for the last-placed candidate are redistributed based on their next (second) preference. Those without a 2nd preference would have their ballot discarded (set aside as having exhausted all preferences).
This process continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes and is elected. If you give several of the losing candidates a high preference, your ballot might be transferred several times.