Posts by Paul Campbell
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One thing to think about here is that the system is STV "single transferable vote" - you only have one vote, you don't have a second vote if the first vote has already been stuck to a viable candidate.
In a mayoral (or any race with one winner, much simpler than a multi-councillor ward) what happens is:
1) we count all the first votes
2) assign them to candidates
3) remove the candidate with the lowest number of votes
and redistribute their votes to the next candidate on each of their voter's
lists (if the voter's list is empty discard the vote)
4) repeat step 3 until only one candidate is leftIn the end all the votes lie with two candidates , one of whom holds more than 50% of the still viable votes - in a close 3-way tie it's quite possible that the 3rd place winner on the first round still wins the election. STV always results in a mayor elected with votes by more than 50% of the voters (who voted the full list)) - though he or she may not be the first choice of all those voters.
Myles: as Graeme points out if at any point during the counting any candidate ends up with 50%+1 of the viable votes they are going to win anyway as no redistribution of the rest of the votes can possibly beat them.
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yes in some sense STV allows you to both choose between the lesser of two evils while still voting for the candidate you want
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BTW this analysis (by James who posts here) is an excellent description of the STV vote counting process (including a cool graph) in that particular Dunedin election- you can see how low polling candidates drop out during counting and what happens as their votes are redistributed
Notice how the top curve of the line (which represents the number of votes needed to be elected) slowly trends down towards the end - that's because some voters did not rank enough candidates and their vote (or some portion of it) was not counted - you can assume that the difference - about 250 from the start until the end times 11 candidates means that about 2700 votes were lost this way (many of them will be fractions of votes from many more than 270 voters) that's out of ~30k votes cast - an additional 2500 votes were left with the last candidate who didn't get elected meaning that ~5200 votes, around 17% didn't end up with an elected candidate - not too bad I guess 83% got someone they voted for
More importantly though remember to list at least all the candidates you think you can live with even if you don't think they can get elected, if you don;t some of your vote (or all of it) may be wasted
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Thanks that's a great explanation - I want to expand on why you should cast more than one vote in a multi-representative election :
- suppose the person you choose first is really popular - they get 3 times the number of first round votes they need to get elected - that means only 1/3 of your single vote sticks to them and the other 2/3 goes to your second choice, if you don't choose anyone else as second you waste 2/3 of your vote.
- equally suppose you choose someone who is completely unlikely to be elected - you know that they wont get elected - you can safely rank them first knowing that your vote will eventually be distributed to your second or third or even 23rd choice and make a difference
Choosing someone who wont get elected knowing your vote can be safely transfered to someone else is a great way to make a political point about a minority party/person/issue - first round vote tallies are published and your point can be made - maybe even enough people will feel they can take a chance on a minority candidate knowing that they can't "throw away their vote" that that person might get elected
There's a down side of course - Dunedin's central ward last time had 40 candidates for 11 seats - ranking 40 names is hard - I'm glad that this year they've decided to not put them in alphabetical order.
Also last time there was talk of a recount, there were just a few votes in that last seat - from memory the cost for an STV election was quoted at $70k (it would mean keying in all the ballots again - unlike a traditional election STV just can't be counted by poll workers) - if you ask for a recount and don't succeed you pay - to make matters worse there's no effective means to be a scrutineer at a Dunedin STV election - the ballots are counted in Christchurch over a period of weeks prior to the announcement - you'd have to go up there and live for a month.
What this means practically is that we have to depend on the accuracy and independence of the people doing the data entry - probably we should periodically double count random ballots to get some idea of the real world error rate and allow free recounts for results that fall within the statistical margins
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
The aisles on Air New Zealand are so narrow these days that some air hostesses can barely fit down them--and sleeping in an aisle seat means that you get bumped awake every few minutes.
IMHO the number one seat to avoid on a plane is the aisle one on the window side just past where the aisle narrows past the toilet or galley - either the first row or sometimes the second (especially if the first row is 2 seats and the second 3) at first glance it's great because you have lots of lg room, but in reality in the dark someone trips over you every 5 minutes all night
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see this is why I was advocating the passing of doubled barreled surnames to create both a matrilineal line and a patrilineal one - it both solves the problem of hyphenated surnames getting longer at every generation and the inherent sexism of just passing down the male surname.
To recap: each kid gets one name from each parent, girls get both parents' mother's matrilineal names, boys both parents' father's patrilineal names - so if I'm Paul Af-Bm and have kids with Lisa Cm-Df, my daughters will get a last name of Af-Df (and pass Df down through all her daughters' daughters) while my sons will get Cm-Bm (and pass down Bm through their patrilineal line) .
(OK maybe too geeky ... but it does hit all the bases)
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I think McCoskrie wants to back to the days of my youth when people were tarred with the label "bastard", written on their birth certificates, that was snickered about, and that they could never escape
Normalising being a bastard has been a good thing the stigma has gone, for most of us anyway, maybe not the family firsters.
My partner and I married for a visa - 30 years ago, it stuck - we kept our names, gave the kids a hyphenated last name - they actually have unique names on internet searches, while there are thousands of me out there, so not a completely bad thing.
But we kind of punted and told the kids that what they choose to do with their kids names is their decision - I do kind of like one solution to this dilemma - basically you both give your daughters the part of your name you got from your mother and sons the part you got from your father - it in effect creates a matrilineal line for women and a patrilineal line for men.
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Actually now that I think of it I think that AirNZ may have been part of a pilot program around electronic I94s - you may still have gotten one if you crossed a land border
Also don't contact the consulate if you still have an I94 - follow these instructions
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Oh, the I94. They just turned that into an electronic record a couple of months ago, but until that point they certainly hadn't got any better with them - I got a severe telling-off last year for not having made sure mine was taken away before I left the US.
Are you sure? I haven't had an I94 (that green thing they staple in your passport) in 2-3 years.
I've certainly gone back a couple of times at SFO and handed mine in when a checkin person forgot - I can't help but wonder that sometimes the further processing that was supposed to be done on them gets flubbed without your knowledge - I'd be much happier with a "you have left the US" stamp in my passport
If you (anyone) happen to still have an I94 stapled in your passport contact the US consulate now and put things right before you find yourself in some future immigration limbo
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grr indeed someone saw that as a profit centre