Posts by Steve Todd
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Hilary Stace,
>>> DHB elections have a lot of candidates because there are only 20 DHB regions – ie electorates – in the country. FPP requires as much work for the informed voter – you need to read the candidates’ bios and decide who you like. You either tick up to that number (in FPP) or rank (STV). STV is a much fairer consensus building voting system so a little bit more effort required for ranking is not much to ask. <<<
Yes, in 2001 (under FPP), there were 1,047 DHB candidates nationwide. In 2004 (STV) there was half that number and, in 2007, half that number again. I don't recall the 2010 figures, but I don't expect Isabel Hitchings' task to be too onerous this year.
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Yes, I think the Hutt Valley DHB used the incorrectly named pseudo-random ordering of candidates (same random order on all voting documents), and the regional council used alphabetical ordering. It's hard to find these things out without going to a lot of trouble.
Wellington City and Capital & Coast DHB use random candidate-ordering (different random order on each voting document), and hopefully the regional council will, too, this year, now that it has adopted STV.
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Paul Campbell,
Yes, exactly Paul, although I would drop the words "in some sense". That is one of the many reasons, contrary to Rich's view, why STV is the very best electoral system yet devised by humankind. And we in New Zealand are so lucky to have the very best, up-to-date, computer-compatible version of that very best system.
As asides, I, too, am pleased the DCC has gone with random candidate-ordering. And, a recount in the Central ward last time would not have changed the final result, assuming all the voting documents were input correctly (which they would have been). That is one of the beauties of computers - if you input the same information, repeatedly, you will get the same outcome, repeatedly.
(I have seen the votes being scanned/input into the computers (at a trial), and the process is very rigorous. That lady who was the runner-up in Central last time, was too far adrift of the 10th and 11th winners. For her to have got up on a recount, would have required that it was found that some 40+ votes were originally miss-entered, and that simply would not have been the case.)
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Hilary Stace,
While it is perfectly valid to vote, simply by placing a unique first preference beside the name of the candidate you most wish to see elected, by doing so, you are, as Graeme has already pointed out, risking your vote being wasted, in whole or in part.
A classic example of votes being wasted (in whole) was seen at the 2010 Wellington City mayoral election, at which Celia Wade-Brown came from behind to defeat the incumbent, Kerry Prendergast. At the end of the count, 3,783 votes (7.09% of the 53,369 valid votes cast) had dropped out of the count; had become non-transferable. In other words, astonishingly (to me, at least), those 3,783 voters declined the opportunity to indicate a preference between the two *main* candidates; the only two candidates with a chance of winning.
Given that Celia won the election by just 176 votes, had 177+ of those voters carried on and indicated a final preference for Kerry over Celia, Kerry would have retained the mayoralty.
At iteration 4, when the third-placed candidate, Jack Yan, was excluded from the count, his 7,426 votes were distributed 1,806 to Kerry, 3,459 to Celia, and 2,161 went to the total of non-transferable votes. It seems to me that the great majority of the sort of people who would have supported Jack (generally speaking: young, educated, switched-on, socially/politically aware), would have had a preference for one or other of the last two remaining candidates, even if they didn't particularly like either of them. Yet, amazingly, 29.10% of them chose not to express that preference.
Given that the preferences for the previously-excluded candidates transferred about 2 to 1 to Celia, it is probable that about 700 of those 2,161 voters would have preferred Kerry to Celia, but didn't say so. As I say, if 177+ *had* said so, Kerry would have hung on, to win. By not saying so, those 700 or so voters allowed their lesser-preferred candidate (of the remaining two) to come through and snatch the prize.
That is why it is important for voters to express as many preferences for the candidates as they are able. The more preferences that are expressed, the more likely it is for voters to have a direct effect on the final outcome.
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Papers that I have written, explaining how STV works, can be accessed at the end of the post here - http://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/in-defence-of-stv-2/.