From: foy@aero.org (Richard Foy)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarian Strategy
Date: 8 Nov 1992 02:53:35 GMT
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aerospace.aero.org

In article <1992Nov05.162625.40525@watson.ibm.com> lar@vnet.ibm.com writes:
....
>
>Please pardon my ignorance, can you elaborate more on what a Single
>Transferrable vote is? Is this the "New Hampshire" model ??
>
>Thanks!
>
..
>
>-Lar
>


Following is a copy of a post describing the Single Transferrable Vote as
used in Ireland. I also have the more detailed descrition that the author
mentions at the end of his post.

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To: foy
Subject: Re: Third Parties
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 92 9:46:46 BST
From: amck@maths.tcd.ie
Message-Id:  <9206250946.aa0419s@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>



The difference is the electoral system. A 'first past the post' electoral
system in the US,etc makes it extremely difficult for a third party to
change the system. The best example is Britain. If you don't like the
current government (conservative), and try to support a party other than
Labour (the 'largest' other party), say voting Liberal, you either succeed
and get more votes than any other party (not necessarily the majority
of the votes ; at the last election the conservatives got 41%, i.e. 59%
wanted something else) or else your plan backfires, you 'split the
opposition', eg.
        Conservative 40%
        Labour       30%
        Liberal      30%
Now, most people want something other than the Conservatives, but in this
seat, the conservatives win. Most people are dissatisfied.

If peoples third party choices, ie. what they really want, don't look like
they could win, they may just pick the largest opposition party (labour)
in the hope of unseating the current government. Hence a two-party
system.

In every other European country, from Iceland to Siberia, a form of
Proportional representation exists. Here the seats in Parliament, which
votes for the Prime Minister, are divided out in proportion to the popular
vote; in the above case, a COALITION of the Labour and Liberal would
be formed, or more likely a coalition of more parties; there would be
more parties, and the coalition would have to represent the majority of
people in the country. Also, to get into goverment, since in very few
of the countries does any party have >50% support, parties have to be
willing to co-operate with each other and form a working goverment.

This would not fit easily into a US-style Presedential executive, but you
could use the system of election we have in Ireland:
Single Transferable Vote

To see how this works, look at our last Presedential election (a mostly
ceremonial role).
I get a ballot paper listing candidates. I dont use a single X, but
number the candidates in order of preference 1, 2, 3.
We had 3 candidates. They got their first preference votes as
follows:
                Brian Lenihan   44 %
                Mary Robinson   35 %
                Austin Currie   16 %
(I think, roughly right)
Now, under the US system , Lenihan would have been elected. Here, if any one
candidate has >50% of the vote, they win, but in this case, no-one did.
So now we eliminate the candidate with the least votes, and transfer
their second preferences.
This turns into a form of 'second election', to those who would have liked
Austin Currie. In effect we ask them 'IF you can't have him, which way
would you vote ?' -- their second preference.
His second preferences were about
        Robinson        ~ 70 %
        Lenihan         ~ 10 %
        invalid         rest
( you don't have to list all the way, 1,2,3, you can stop at any
number, it just wastes your vote later)
So, the votes were transferred to Lenihan and Robinson, giving
                Robinson        52%
                Lenihan         46 %

So, Mary Robinson won.

This system allows multiple candidates with a fair representation of
peoples actual views, rather than making them vote for someone who they think
likely to win , since their vote is not wasted if they vote for someone
who does not win. This is a simple example of STV as its called; its used in
our parliament with Multi-seat constituencies (where we ahev multiple
people representing a district); it gives great representation; in
the last election , 83% of the populatin managed to get their first
preference candidate elected (and hence someone of their party affililiation
or alignment, who would argue their case in Parliament, for example).
If you are interested, I will mail you a fuller explanation.








Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian