History and use of the single transferable vote

"Proportional Representation by means of the Single Transferable Vote" (commonly called "Proportional Representation" rather than "Single Transferable Vote") is used for all public elections in the Republic of Ireland, except that the Qu-winner elections (presidential elections and the Qu-vacancy by-elections) reduce to instant-runoff voting. The most important elections in the Republic are those to Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (parliament). The Dáil is directly elected from constituencies of between three and five seats. The Irish constitution specifies a minimum size of three seats and, although there is no maximum size, there have been no constituencies of more than five seats since 1947.

In the Senate, the weak upper house, six University seats are filled from two three-seat constituencies, while 43 vocational panel seats are filled on a restricted franchise from five panels of up to eleven seats. The panel election rules depart from true STV by requiring a minimum number of candidates to be elected from each of two sub-panels;[5] in the 2007 Cultural and Educational Panel election Ann Ormonde was elected despite having fewer votes than Terence Slowey when Slowey was eliminated.[6][7]

STV is also used in local and European elections, and is common in private organisations, such as student unions. However, some representatives on the Senate of the National University of Ireland are elected by cumulative voting.[8][9]

All votes are paper ballots completed and counted manually. Electronic voting was trialled in some constituencies in the 2002 election, but discontinued due to concerns about the lack of an audit trail. Irish STV elections use the simple Hare method of surplus transfers, except for the Senate panels, which use the Gregory method. A ballot need only rank a the Qu candidate to be deemed valid; the quota is not recalculated to take account of exhausted ballots, which means candidates may be elected without reaching the quota.

STV was first used in Ireland in the University of Dublin constituency in the 1918 Westminster election. The 1917 Speaker's Conference had recommended STV for all multi-seat Westminster constituencies, but it was only applied to university constituencies. With the growth of revolutionary Irish nationalism in Ireland, STV was introduced at local level by the UK government to ensure unionist minority representation in nationalist-majority areas and vice versa; however, minority representation did not always occur in practice. STV was first applied in the 1919 Sligo borough election under the Sligo Corporation Act, 1918, a private act of Parliament sponsored by the Corporation after representations from a mainly-Protestant group of leading ratepayers.[22] The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1919 extended STV universally from the 1920 local elections, and the Government of Ireland Act 1920 applied it to the 1921 Home Rule elections. The 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State mandated proportional representation,[23] and STV was specified in statute law.[24]

Initially 46% of Dáil members were elected from constituencies of seven, eight or nine seats, until 1935 when seven seats became the largest size. Since 1947 Dáil constituencies have been no larger than five seats. The 60 members of the Free State Seanad were intended to be directly elected, one of four cohorts every three years, with the state forming a single 15-seat STV constituency. The only such election was in 1925, for 19 seats (15 scheduled plus 4 casual vacancies). There were 78 candidates on the ballot paper, counting took two weeks, and many independents were elected. The process was seen as too cumbersome, and so indirect election by Oireachtas members was introduced for subsequent Seanad elections.[25]

Two attempts have been made by Fianna Fáil governments to abolish STV and replace it with the first past the post plurality system. Both attempts were rejected by voters in referendums held in 1959 and again in 1968. In the past, gerrymandering was also attempted by several governments, in particular by varying the sizes (that is, the number of seats) of particular constituencies. This attempt backfired, however, in the 1977 general election when a larger than expected vote-swing caused a tipping effect resulting in disproportionate losses for the government. This botched attempt at Gerrymandering became known as the "Tullymander" after minister James Tully. Since 1977, constituencies have been drawn up by an independent Constituency Commission under terms of reference given by the Minister for the Environment. Elections from 1932 to 1987 resulted in either a single-party Fianna Fáil government or a coalition of two or more of the other parties. Since 1989, every government has been a coalition.

From 1941 to 1965, the city councils of Cork, Limerick and Waterford were each elected in a single local electoral area (LEA), returning 21,[26] 17,[n 6] and 15[29] councillors respectively.[30] Electoral law empowered the minister for local government to split county boroughs into multiple LEAs only if the council requested; these councils did not do so, as a majority of councillors were independents or from small parties and feared that smaller LEAs would favour the large parties. The Electoral Act 1963 allowed the minister to act unilaterally and the boroughs were divided in time for the 1967 local elections.[31] The change was justified on the basis that the ballots were long and unwieldy and many votes were wasted when ballots were exhausted.[32] The LEAs defined under the Local Government Reform Act 2014 return between 6 and 10 councillors;[33] the Fine Gael–led government formed after the 2016 election is considering reducing these sizes.[34]

From 1979 to 2012, some members of Údarás na Gaeltachta were elected by STV from Gaeltacht constituencies: from 1979 to 1999, 7 of 13 members were elected from 2- or 3-seat constituencies;[35] from 1999 to 2012, 17 of 20 were elected from constituencies returning 1 to 6 members.[36][37]

Australia uses two forms of STV, usually referred to within Australia as Hare-Clark Proportional Representation and Group-Voting Proportional Representation (or sometimes Ticket-Voting Proportional Representation). Both systems require voters to rank several, or all, of the candidates on the ballot, reducing or 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, within the column for each party, are randomised by Robson Rotation rather than alphabetical. Casual vacancies are filled by the countback method, which involves recounting the original ballots to elect one of the candidates who stood but failed to be elected in the last election.

Australian Senate ballot paper used in Victoria for 2016

The Group-Voting or Ticket-Voting system was used in the Australian Senate from 1984 to 2013 and the Legislative Councils of Victoria (from 2006), Western Australia and South Australia (from 1985 to 2014). The votes are counted in the basically same way as under Hare-Clark, but when casting votes, voters have the option of selecting one single group voting ticket instead of numbering individual candidates below the line. Groups of candidates (usually, but not inevitably, corresponding to political parties) may each pre-register one ranked list of all the candidates (or, in some systems, two lists) and the votes above the line for each ticket are deemed to have numbered the candidates in the order pre-specified on the team's list (if the team lodged two lists, 50% of the votes go to each version). Casual vacancies are usually filled by the house of parliament with the vacancy, though there may be a requirement 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 the effect of 'donkey voting' is reduced because of the randomised ordering, and the absence of the group voting tickets creates more personal accountability. The alternative system is advocated on the grounds that informal voting (spoiled ballots) is reduced because only one number need be written; on the other hand, it greatly increases the potential for tactics by parties as they have direct control of a large percentage of the vote. In the Australian Senate elections, nearly 95% of voters use the group voting tickets instead of ranking their own preferences. As a result, the informal rate reduced from around 10 percent, to around three percent.

STV-PR was used in the Calgary and Edmonton electoral districts for electing Members of the Alberta Legislative Assembly from 1926 to 1955, with five, six or seven MLAs being elected at-large in each city. Medicine Hat used STV for the 1926 election only, electing two MLAs. Between 1924 and 1955, all other electoral districts used instant-runoff voting alternative voting / preferential voting. In 1958 the cities were divided into many single-member constituencies, and all MLAs were elected in single-member first past the post elections.

As well, STV was used for city elections in Calgary from 1917 to 1960 and in 1971, Edmonton from 1923 to 1927 and Lethbridge in 1928.[39]

Many British Columbia (BC) cities used multi-member at-large voting for their municipal elections at one point, including Vancouver, Victoria, New Westminster and Nelson.[39] Two types of voting were used at different times – block voting during most periods, and between 1917 and 1926, many used the single transferable vote.

Provincially, British Columbia used a mixture of voting methods to elect their members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs): single-member districts using first-past-the-post and multi-member districts using through block voting. Elections in BC from the province's creation until the 1990 election were held under a mix of multi-member and single-member districts, with district types often being changed back and forth from one election to the next.

Through the 1940s, the province was governed by a coalition of the British Columbia Conservative Party (the Conservatives) and the British Columbia Liberal Party (the Liberals). Neither party had sufficient electoral support to form government alone, and the coalition allowed these parties to keep the left-of-centre Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) out of power.

By the 1950s, the coalition had begun to fall apart, resulting in the Conservatives and Liberals having to run for office separately under their own party banners. However, to try to prevent the CCF from being elected, one of the last acts of the coalition government was to introduce the alternative voting system (known today in the US as instant-runoff voting), which was implemented for the 1952 general election.

Rather than voting for one candidate by marking an "X" on their ballots, electors ranked the candidates running in their constituency by placing numbers next to the names of the candidates on the ballot. If a candidate received a majority of votes cast, that candidate was elected. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes was dropped and the second choices were allocated among the remaining candidates. This procedure was repeated until a candidate received a majority of votes.

The result of using this voting method was the unexpected election of enough candidates of a new party, the British Columbia Social Credit Party (the SoCreds), to form a minority government, with the CCF forming the official opposition. The BC Liberals were reduced to six members in the Legislature. The Conservatives (who changed their party name to the "Progressive Conservatives" in tandem with their federal counterparts) were reduced to four.

The SoCred minority government lasted only nine months. Alternative voting was again employed for the next general election. The result was a SoCred majority. During this term of office, the SoCreds abolished the new voting system and returned the province to the province's traditional mixed system of block voting in multiple-member constituencies and FPTP contests in single-member districts, which benefited the government party by creating large numbers of wasted votes and a wide possibility for gerrymandering. Finally in the 1980s, this unfair system was discarded due to wide criticism, and the province adopted FPTP.

Electoral reform became an issue again in the 1990s, particularly after the CCF, now the British Columbia New Democratic Party (BC NDP), was re-elected for a second time that decade in the 1996 election. While the NDP won a majority of seats in the election, the opposition Liberals had won a larger share of the popular vote. After the Liberals won the 2001 election, they created the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

The Assembly surprised many when it proposed an STV electoral model called BC-STV and recommended it to the electorate.[40] In the ensuing electoral reform referendum held on May 17, 2005, BC-STV achieved a majority 57.7% Yes support. However, this did not give it the 60% province-wide support set as a requirement by the Liberal government for the referendum outcome to be automatically binding. Nevertheless, the "Yes" simple majority support in 77 provincial ridings (out of 79) far exceeded the 48-riding level that had also been specified as a requirement.

Due to the evident support for electoral reform, the re-elected BC Liberal government announced in the Throne Speech on September 12, 2005, that the public of British Columbia would get a second referendum on STV in November 2008. This was later rescheduled: the second referendum on electoral reform was then planned to be held in conjunction with the May 12, 2009 provincial general election. In the interim, the Electoral Boundaries Commission designed new boundaries for both FPTP and STV. Both supporting and opposing sides of the referendum campaign received government funding to help educate the public in time for the referendum.[41] In contrast to the 2005 vote, which saw 57.7% of voters in favour of STV, the STV initiative was then defeated on May 12, 2009, with only 39% of voters in support.[42]

Provincial elections in Manitoba were conducted partly by STV from 1920 until 1958:

• Winnipeg was constituted as a ten-member constituency in 1920 for that year's election,[43] while the other single-member constituencies had to wait until 1924 for the adoption of instant run-off voting which was first used in the 1927 election.[44]
• In 1949, after considerable debate, Winnipeg was divided into three four-member constituencies, and St. Boniface became a two-member constituency.[45]
• Manitoba returned to first past the post voting in 1955,[46] which was implemented in the 1958 election.

Municipal elections in Winnipeg, Transcona, St. James and St. Vital were also conducted by STV from 1920 to 1971.[47][48]

The municipal election act used for elections to all of Ontario's municipal councils was amended in 2016, and since then municipalities have had the option to institute a ranked ballot. Ontario's municipalities have a variety of electoral configurations: some with all single-member districts, some with all multi-member districts, some electing members at-large, and some using a mixture of these approaches; the relevant regulations outline the use of instant-runoff voting where a single representative is to be elected and STV where multiple representatives are to be elected.[49]

As of the 2018 Ontario municipal elections, only one council, that of the City of London, will be elected using a ranked-choice ballot. As London exclusively uses single-member districts, its election will be instant-runoff voting and not STV. The next opportunity for a municipality to potentially adopt STV will be the 2022 Ontario municipal elections.

The city of Saskatoon used STV for its municipal elections 1916 to 1930 and 1938 to 1942.

AS well, Regina, Moose Jaw and North Battleford also used the system at one time.[39]

Under the proposed Bill C-43 before the Parliament of Canada during the 39th Parliament – 1st Session (April 3, 2006 – September 14, 2007)), STV would have been used for consultative elections of Senators.[50]

For the 1995 election of Hong Kong's 60-member Legislative Council, STV was used to elect the 10-member Election Committee constituency. Following the 1997 transfer to Chinese sovereignty, the method changed to plurality-at-large voting.

STV is not used for direct elections in India, but is used for the indirect election of most members of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the federal parliament. The Rajya Sabha consists of 250 members: twelve are nominated by the President of India while the remainder are elected using STV by members of the legislatures of the states and the union territories. The number of members of the Rajya Sabha elected by each state and union territory is loosely proportionate to its population, such that, as of 2006, Bihar, with a population of 82 million, is represented by 22 members, while Sikkim, with a population of 540,000 is represented by just one member.

In addition, the federal president and vice-president are indirectly elected by MPs using alternative vote, which is STV applied to one vacancy at a time.

STV has applied for all elections in Malta since 1921. 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.[51] 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

In New Zealand STV is used in elections to small number of local authorities and in all elections for District Health Boards. The count is conducted using Meek's method. District Health Boards consist of a mixture of appointed and elected members. The vast majority of local authorities use plurality at large (bloc voting) instead of STV. Current use of STV was introduced by the Local Electoral Act 2001 and began with elections to local councils and District Health Boards in October 2004[52]

During the 20th century STV was used for elections to the Christchurch City Council in 1917, 1929, 1931 and 1933, and for Woolston Borough Council in 1917 and 1919. In business, Fonterra used STV for their board of directors and Shareholders' Council elections in 2002. The Local Electoral Act 2001 provided that STV was mandatory for District Health Board elections but offered local councils the choice of either staying with plurality at large or changing to STV. It also provided for a binding poll of voters in an area to be held to determine the which system would be used, either at the initiative of the council or by a citizen's initiative instigated by voters in an area.[53] In practice very few local authorities adopted STV under the Act's provisions, and in those that did the use of STV was plagued by poor explanations of the STV process, which often gave little more information than an algorithmic description of how to place a vote. This left the unfortunate impression among voters that STV was little more than a gratuitously complex equivalent to existing voting mechanisms. Nonetheless New Zealand made history by becoming the first country in the world to use the advanced Meek's method of STV.

In the 2004 elections 81 STV elections occurred, but two were not contested. Confusion was caused by the fact that some local elections included ballots for multiple local government bodies, some of which were conducted by single-winner plurality ("first past the post"), some by plurality at large, and some by STV. An example of the confusion among voters was one result from the 2007 elections, in which the first place went to blank or incomplete voting forms and the fourth place went to incorrectly filled-out forms. The actual candidates came in at places two and three.[54] Due to low voter turnout, the high number of spoilt votes and the long time taken for results to be declared, the Justice and Electoral Committee of the Parliament of New Zealand has undertaken an inquiry into the use of STV in New Zealand.

STV is not used for elections to the UK Parliament at Westminster but is used for all Assembly, European and local government elections in Northern Ireland, and for local elections in Scotland. In Northern Ireland, Assembly elections involve five-seat constituencies, while local elections currently use constituencies of between five and seven seats. For European elections Northern Ireland serves as a single three-seat constituency. Local elections in Scotland use constituencies of three or four seats. All official STV elections in the UK use the Gregory method of counting votes.

STV is also used by many private organisations. For example, it is used in many British university students' unions (and promoted by the National Union of Students as the fairest way of running elections), for all elections within the University of Cambridge[55] and for electing board members in The Co-operative Group.

As noted above, because it was invented by the Englishman Thomas Hare and has been used in many parts of the former British Empire, STV has in the past been referred to as "British proportional representation". Nonetheless it has never been used by more than a handful of constituencies in the British Parliament. In 1917, the Speaker's Conference in the United Kingdom advocated the adoption of STV for 211 of the 569 constituencies in the UK, and instant-runoff voting 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.[56][57] Nonetheless in 1918 STV was adopted for the university constituencies of Cambridge, Oxford, Combined English Universities, Combined Scottish Universities and Dublin University; these constituencies continued to use STV until their abolition in 1950 (or 1922 in the case of Dublin University). STV was also introduced for local elections in the Irish borough of Sligo in 1918, and extended to all Irish local government shortly afterwards.

In 1921 the UK government attempted to establish two home rule parliaments in Ireland–the Parliament of Southern Ireland and the Parliament of Northern Ireland–with the Irish general elections of 1921, both of which were conducted using STV. The intention of using STV in Ireland was partly to ensure adequate representation for the Catholic minority in the North and the Protestant minority in the South. Southern Ireland seceded from the UK in 1921 but today, as the Republic of Ireland, continues to use STV for all of its elections. The Northern Ireland Parliament continued to use STV until 1929 when it switched to the first-past-the-post plurality system. However STV was reintroduced there after the imposition of direct rule in 1973, and is now in use for all elections except those to Westminster.[58]

In Scotland, following the passage of the Local Governance (Scotland) Act on 23 June 2004, all local governments have used STV to elect their councillors since 2007.[59] In Wales, the Richard Commission recommended in March 2004 changing the electoral system for the National Assembly for Wales to the Single Transferable Vote. However, in the white paper Better Governance for Wales published on 15 June 2005, the UK Government, without giving reasons, rejected Richard's recommendation to change the electoral system.

Adoption and repeal of the Single Transferable Vote in United States municipal elections

As of 2016, the only official governing bodies that use STV to elect representatives are the City Council and School Committee of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Board of Estimate and Taxation (2 members) and the Park and Recreation Board (3 members) of Minneapolis, Minnesota.[60] However, STV was more widely used in the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

Twenty-two American cities have used STV for local elections. It was first used in North America in Ashtabula, Ohio, in 1915.[61] It was used for the election of the nine-member city council of Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1924 to 1957, and was also used in Cleveland, Ohio and Sacramento, California. New York City adopted STV in 1936 as a method for breaking the corrupt political machine of Tammany Hall dominating the city and used it for five elections in 1937 to 1945. Except in Ashtabula and New York City, STV was part of a council–manager city charter adopted at the same time. STV was included in the National Municipal League's model city charter from 1914 to 1964. Every adoption was by initiative. The typical adoption coalition included a city's minority party and other groups seeking increased representation.[62]

African-Americans and political minorities such as supporters of the Communists and urban Republicans used STV to win seats. And opponents of political reform challenged STV after these successes. Only two of the first 24 repeal efforts in cities around the nation were successful, but after World War II, harsh campaigns against STV were successfully carried out. After STV's removal and subsequent reversion to the current 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.[63] STV has also been used in the election of New York City community school board members.

More recently, there have been other campaigns in some cities to introduce STV. Davis, California passed an advisory referendum to use STV for future city council elections. The community school boards of the City of New York used STV until the school boards themselves were abolished in 2002. The city of San Francisco in 1996 considered multimember STV in a referendum; this effort failed, with the city instead voting for district elections and, in 2002, adopting instant runoff voting. Cincinnati also narrowly failed to restore STV for city council elections in citizen initiatives in 1988 and 1991.

STV has become increasingly used at American universities for student government elections. As of 2017, the schools of Carnegie Mellon,[64][65] MIT, Oberlin, Princeton, Reed, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Vassar, and Whitman all use STV, and several other universities are considering its adoption.

The following cities in the United States have all used single transferable vote methods to elect local government legislative bodies, typically for city council elections. Most of these cities had stopped using it by 1960. (Listed by State):

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, all the British Green Parties, the Green Party of the United States and the Green Party of California. It is also used to elect members of the General Synod of the Church of England. The UK Royal Statistical Society[68] uses STV with Meek's method to elect their council. Some Unitarian Church groups have used Single Transferable Vote to select projects for funding. Twin Oaks Community uses a version of STV they call Fair-Share Spending[69] to elect projects and set their budgets.[70] The US-Based Pacifica Radio Network uses STV to elect its station governing boards.

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

The selection of nominees for Academy Awards is via an STV ballot of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Differences from STV are that voters may only rank as many choices as nominees (five for most categories, with ten for best picture), and that at least one first preference is required for a candidate to be successful. Selection of a winner from among the nominees is done using plurality voting.[71][72]