Voting System

Why do we use it?

Parliamentary Elections use the first past the post system, which gives you one vote. The Transferable Vote System allows each voter the fullest freedom of choice between candidates and the maximum use of their vote. In a first past the post election a candidate is elected simply by coming top of the poll. Let us look at a typical result in a Parliamentary Election.

• Homer Simpson 9,999
• Ned Flanders 10,000
• Krusty the Klown 9,500
• Mr. Burns 8,000

Flanders is first past the post and will represent that constituency despite the fact that 27,499 did not want him to be their representative and chose other people. In effect their votes are wasted.

In the Transferable Vote System each voter is asked to give an order of personal preference. Using this method a candidate either has just enough to be elected or has too few votes and has to be eliminated. If this occurs their votes do not go to waster but are redistributed to their next choice of candidate and so on. In this way a greater proportion of the total vote is used to elect the successful candidate (s) who should, therefore, be more likely to represent the views of the majority of the electorate.
The Transferable Vote System can be used to elect a single position such as an Executive member or several people such as the NUS Conference delegations.

There are two different types of transferable Vote.

• Alternative transferable Vote is used to elect single positions.
• Single transferable Vote is used to elect multiple positions.

Alternative Transferable Vote

The ballot paper shown below gives the returning Officer a message;

• Homer Simpson 1
• Ned Flanders 4
• Krusty the Klown
• Mr. Burns 2
• Re-Open Nominations 3

If you were to meet that voter in the bar she might say;

" "¦I would like to see Homer Simpson elected to this position, however if he is out of the running then I would prefer Mr Burns were elected. If he too is no longer available as a candidate then none of the others really impress me and I would prefer that Nominations were opened up again.. if that is not going to be possible then I can live with Ned Flanders but under no circumstances do I want Krusty the Klown running things"¦"

Once all the completed ballot forms have been collected in, all the papers are sorted out into first preferences. During this sorting process any incorrectly marked papers will come to light and will be set aside as invalid. Such "invalid" votes usually occur because the voter has not made their intentions clear, for example, they may have put two number ones or used crosses throughout, and of course some people deliberately spoil their ballot papers..

At this stage once all the ballot papers have been sorted into their piles the Returning Officer has to work out a quota. This is simply the minimum number of voters a candidate must gain to be sure of election. For single posts the quota is quite easy, the successful candidate must gain a minimum of 50 per cent plus one.

So to use the example given above for a Parliamentary Election 37,499 votes were cast, so the quota is 18,749 + 1 = 18,750.

As can be seen Ned Flanders has not achieved that amount of support - so the candidate will the least amount of votes is eliminated and their votes are allocated to the next expressed preference. Mr Burns 8,000 votes are recounted and their next preferences distributed between the remaining candidates. Thus for example this could result in the following outcome:

• Homer Simpson 9,999 + 3000 = 12,999
• Ned Flanders 10,000 + 500 = 10,500
• Krusty the Klown 9,500 + 4,500 =14,000
• Mr Burns 8,000 Eliminated.

This gives us a new leader in Krusty the Klown. No-one has yet got the quota that is required so again the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and that is Ned Flanders, who you will remember won under the first past the post system.

• Homer Simpson 12,999 + 5,000 = 17,999
• Ned Flanders Eliminated
• Krusty the Klown 14,000 + 5,500 = 19,500

So Krusty wins because he has exceeded the quota of 18,750. By using this system the supporters of Ned Flanders and Mr Burns have still been able to influence the final outcome.