Alternative Vote System
The Alternative Vote (AV) system is a voting method in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed based on the voters' next preferences. This process continues until a candidate secures a majority of the votes.
5 Key excerpts on "Alternative Vote System"
eBook - ePubThinking about Democracy
Power Sharing and Majority Rule in Theory and Practice
- Arend Lijphart(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It is identical with majority-runoff with regard to the first round of voting; after the first round of voting, the weakest candidates are eliminated (those with less than roughly 17 percent of the vote) and other candidates may voluntarily withdraw, but there may be as many as four or five candidates left on the second ballot; in the second round, the winner is the candidate with the most, though not necessarily a majority, of the votes. 5 The situation may be slightly more complicated, as shown by the following example: candidates A, B, C, and D have the support of 41 percent, 29 percent, 16 percent, and 14 percent of the electorate. In a majority-runoff system, A and B will be in the runoff and one of them will win. Under the usual AV method, the weakest candidates are eliminated sequentially. This means that the ballots with D as their top preference will be transferred first; if all of these ballots have C as their second preference, C will have 30 percent of the vote, B (instead of C) will be eliminated, and either A or C will be the winner. AV is therefore a more sensitive method for finding the candidate with the strongest support. Horowitz provides two definitions of AV, one of which entails the simultaneous elimination of all but the top two candidates; here the only difference with the majorityrunoff method is that only one round of voting is required. What he calls ‘‘another variant of AV,’’ with sequential elimination and vote transfers, is actually the more common – and a clearly superior – form (pp. 188–89). 6 Horowitz’s third major proposal is federalism (pp. 214–26), which is perfectly compatible with PR and parliamentary government. 7 Horowitz’s statement that ‘‘if there are four seats in a constituency, a candidate could win with about a fourth of the vote’’ (p. 172, emphasis added) is technically not quite correct...
eBook - ePubCitizenship and Democracy
A Case for Proportional Representation
- Nick Leonen(Author)
- 1997(Publication Date)
- Dundurn Press(Publisher)
...Hence, few votes are wasted, and most voters will assist in electing the winning candidates. It should also be noted that lower preferences cannot hurt a voter’s higher preferences, since the lower do not take effect until the higher preferences have either been elected or eliminated. There is no incentive to “plump” one’s vote, although parties may attempt to persuade supporters not to rank candidates beyond those of its own party. The objective is to receive transfers from supporters of other parties without returning a similar benefit. Voters seldom follow such attempts at manipulation, and a party’s rigid unwillingness to cooperate with others can be counterproductive at the ballot box. 56 The system is somewhat similar to the run-off elections political parties use during leadership selection votes. In those instances, on each successive ballot the lowest candidates are dropped, and their supporters can transfer to the remaining candidates. STV earns its name because these successive votes are reduced to a single ballot. Also, the Reform Party of Canada uses STV at their candidate selection meetings. STV is unique among PR systems in the amount of choice it gives to voters. Voters need not restrict their preferences to candidates of one party, and in addition, voters rank the candidates within the parties. STV provides a built-in primary election. Therefore, questions about whether elections should produce representations of geographical or personal interest or a mandate for a particular political program are left to the voters to decide. In contrast, under SMP all such questions, plus the wide diversity of policy positions on issues, are largely decided for the voter by the parties; and they must all be expressed in one single choice. A voter’s ability to express a choice over a range of issues is severely restricted. Voters must support a party’s entire package of policy proposals or reject them all - a most unsatisfying choice...
- Peter Joyce(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...The process is a two-stage affair. It is necessary for a candidate to obtain an overall majority of votes cast in the first-round election in order to secure election to public office. In other words, if 50,000 people voted in a constituency it would be necessary for a candidate to secure 25,001 votes to be elected. If no candidate obtained this required figure, a second-round election is held and the candidate who wins most votes is elected. This system seeks to ensure that the winning candidate gets the endorsement of a majority of the electors who cast their votes in the second election. For presidential contests, the second ballot is between the top two candidates from the first round. For elections to the National Assembly, any candidate who obtains 12.5 per cent of the vote in the first round may enter the second ballot. In practice, however, parties of the Left and Right have often agreed in advance to rally behind one candidate for the second ballot. A variant of the second ballot is the supplementary vote system, which is used in the UK to elect the Mayor of London, and Police and Crime Commissioners. Under this system, voters select candidates in order of preference (numbering them 1, 2, etc.). If no candidate obtains an overall majority (50 per cent + 1 of the votes cast) there is no second ballot. Instead, the top two candidates remain in the contest and the votes of all of those who are eliminated are redistributed to determine the outcome of the contest. THE ALTERNATIVE VOTE The alternative vote is used in Ireland for presidential elections and for by-elections to the lower House, the Daíl. It is also used to select members for the Australian House of Representatives. As with the second ballot described above, a candidate cannot be elected without obtaining majority support from the electorate (namely 50 per cent + 1 of the votes cast). Unlike the second ballot, however, there is no second election. Voters number candidates in order of preference...
eBook - ePubAmerican Voter Turnout
An Institutional Perspective
- David Hill(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The second type of majoritarian system is based on majority rules. In these systems a candidate or party is required to win 50 percent plus one vote of the total vote in order to gain representation in the government (Dahl 2002; Blais and Massicotte 1996; Lijphart 1984; Powell 2000; Rae 1967). There are two variants of majority systems. The two-round system employs a second round, or runoff election, between the top two contenders if no candidate wins an outright majority in the first round of voting. The winner between the two candidates in the runoff election wins the seat in government (Lijphart 1984). The second type of majority system is the alternative vote (AV). Voters are required to rank their preferences among the candidates for office, and a candidate who wins a majority of first preferences wins the seat in government. However, if no candidate wins an outright majority, the candidate with fewest first preferences is dropped and ballots with this candidate listed as first preference are transferred to remaining contestants. This process of excluding the candidate with the fewest first-preference ballots continues until a true majority winner is identified (Blais and Massicotte 1996; Lijphart 1984; Powell 2000). Proportional systems differ greatly from majoritarian systems, which place a single representative elected by a plurality or majority of citizens in government. PR systems allocate governmental power among political parties roughly proportional to their support among the electorate (Blais and Massicotte 1996; Dahl 2002; Lijphart 1984; Powell 2000; Rae 1967). There are two main types of PR systems used by industrialized democracies. The most widely used is the list system. Parties nominate a list of candidates either in one national (usually called at-large) district or in geographic districts with multiple representatives (called multimember districts)...
eBook - ePub- Nils Karlson, Nils Karlson(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The analysis will include four alternative methods for the distribution of seats in parliament: Plurality Rule Approval Voting Borda Count Standard utility Method 4 Plurality Rule The plurality rule gives the voters one vote each and defines the alternative which gets most votes as the winning alternative. It is easy to apply the method for the distribution of seats in a parliament. These are distributed to the parties proportionally to the number of votes that each party obtains. This is called the proportional plurality rule. The parties could also be ranked based on the number of their votes. Approval Voting Approval voting is a newcomer among the collective-decision methods. 5 The plurality rule implies that the voters give the most preferred alternative one vote. Approval voting allows the voter to vote on all alternatives he or she agrees with or approves of. This implies that the voter can vote on more than one alternative, but it is only allowed to give each alternative one vote. The alternative which gets most votes is the winning alternative. National election systems based upon the idea of approval voting do not exist in practice, but it is unproblematic to construct such an approval election system. In this study, parliamentary seats are allocated according to approval voting in the following way. Each party’s approval votes are counted and related to the total number of approval votes. Each party’s share of seats in parliament is equivalent to the party’s share of the total number of approval votes. The parties could also be ranked with regard to the number of approval votes. Borda Count The French mathematician Jean Charles Borda developed a decision rule, which takes into account all positional or ordinal information on individual preference orders. The voters are asked to rank all alternatives and the Borda count method gives each alternative points according to the positions of the alternatives in the voters’ ranking orders...
