Single Transferable Vote

So, I just remembered that I promised Michelle and others that I write about the Single Transferable Vote system - its one that the Tasmanian parliament uses and a system that I personally like over the one person one vote system we have in the United States today.
Today, in the US, we have to pick one person/party for each election. We have to have full faith that our choice would win. This is not a very good system - only one person can run from each party and there is a fear that multiple people would split votes. This has happened in the United States before - when Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson ran in the 1912 election, Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican Party, allowing Wilson, who was a minority candidate, to win the election.

The S.T.V. system isn't for presidential elections though - it's for representatives (which is why it is used in the Tasmanian legislature). In Tasmania, the entire state sends a total of 11 representatives. Each person, instead of voting for just one person, ranks their choices based on the ballot. They can rank however many they want, from 1 to all of them.

At election time, the votes are counted as such: A threshold must be passed to become a representative - in Tasmania's case, it's 100/11 or 9.1%. Once those who pass those threshold are selected, the fun comes in.

If you won the election, any of your votes over 9% get moved to the second choice on the ballot. If you were dead last, your votes get discarded, and each of your voters second choices gets your votes, and the system is reevaluated. This keeps happening until all the positions are filled.

I covered it in small, but if you like interesting education videos that are entertaining to watch, you should watch this one! (This is how I got interested in all this stuff)


-Avi