How should I use my single transferrable vote?

 Despite using the STV election system for so long in Northern Ireland I have discovered that a lot of people still do not fully understand how the system works. There has been debate about moving away from first past the post for Westminster elections, but this debate is pointless if people do not understand STV. I have tried to put together an explanation that anyone can share to help understand the system. STV stands for ‘Single transferrable vote’. 

 

Voting

 

For the first part, forget all parties and candidates you are aware of. Imagine you have been invited to a large breakfast, and every guest has the chance to determine what is on the menu. You are presented with a variety of options and you have to vote for what you want to be served on the day. There will be 5 breakfast options and these will be the most popular 5 as voted for by the guests, but the menu will be decided using a single transferrable vote. To make this more similar to an election I have added party allegiances for the options. This is your ballot paper. Note, the details section will usually include an address or similar for the candidate.

 

 

The polling staff will explain how to vote, you will be provided with a pencil and you will be instructed to place it into the correct ballot box. You can vote for as many candidates as you want in order of preference, every candidate can get a preference if you want, or just one of them. It’s your choice. Here’s an example of how I would vote in this situation.

 

 

I have given my first preference to ‘cereal’ from the ‘fibre party’. I have cereal for breakfast everyday so I’d prefer to have it at this event as well. I haven’t transferred to the second fibre party option though, I don’t think a cereal bar is a substantial breakfast so I have skipped it and given my second preference to ‘fruit salad’ because I also like to have fruit every day. The fibre party probably isn’t happy that their voter didn’t transfer to their other option, but it’s my vote and I didn’t like the other option. 

 

I am not a huge fan of a cooked breakfast, but I have to ensure that there is an option that I could eat so I have to keep transferring. My 3^rd preference is an omelette, I would prefer it for lunch but it will do. Bacon bap gets my next preference followed by a toastie and toast. I am not transferring any further because I would not want any of the other options for breakfast. In other words, I’d rather eat nothing at all than have to eat any of the other options for breakfast. Don’t judge me by my breakfast choices!

 

So this is exactly how you should vote in STV elections. Keep transferring until every candidate left is, in your opinion, as bad as each other and not capable of representing your interests. 

 

So now that we have covered how to vote I will cover how these votes are counted. This is probably the most complicated aspect of STV elections. Feel free to in]gore the next section if you just want to know how the voting process works. The counting section will be more complicated but it is useful to understand just how our votes are counted and transferred. 

 

Counting 

 

In STV elections each area will elect more than one candidate. In Northern Ireland council elections each District Electoral Area will elect between 5-7 candidates. Each NI Assembly constituency elects 5 candidates. To simplify things we will be using the most recent NI Assembly election for examples.  So, with a set number of seats this means there is a number that it is only possible for 5 candidates to reach. We call this the quota and any candidate who reaches or exceeds the quota is elected. In other words, the quota is the smallest number of votes that only 5 candidates can reach based on the total number of valid votes cast. A 6^th candidate can get close to the quota, but can never reach it. 

 

We find the quota by taking the total number of valid votes and divide that by one greater than the number of seats available and then add 1 again. So we will use East Belfast as an example. There were 42,708 valid votes cast, and with 5 seats available we shall divide that number by 6. So 43,248➗6 = 7,208, and then we add 1 so the quota is 7,209. Anyone who reaches 7,209 or above is deemed elected because it is only possible for 5 candidates to reach this number. You can see the first preferences from Belfast East below. 

 

 

From the first preferences we can see that only 2 candidates have reached the quota. Naomi Long has, 8,195 votes (986 more than needed) and Joanne Bunting has 7,253 votes (44 more than needed). However we need to elect 5 candidates and we cannot just assume the next 3 highest first preference vote winners will win their seats. As it happens the top 5 candidates on first preferences do indeed win these 5 seats, however there were several instances where did not happen. We don’t need the details of those here so I will explain what happens next.

 

In stage 2 of the count we can do one of 2 things. We can either eliminate candidates who do not have enough votes to get elected or we can distribute some votes from someone who has exceeded the quota. To make it fair the option is decided for us. We can only eliminate a candidate if there are not enough votes available to save them from elimination. In this case while Eoin MacNeill only won 72 votes, Naomi Long has a surplus of 986 and so it is possible for MacNeill to be saved. We cannot assume that most of these votes will go to the other Alliance candidate because we will only know that when we check. Remember, I voted for cereal but did not transfer to cereal bar. 

 

We are also obliged to transfer a surplus if it is possible to elect another candidate. That is also possible here as David Brooks is only 576 votes away from being elected. Therefore stage 2 of this count will consist of distributing Naomi Long’s surplus vote. There are 2 ways of doing this. We can either take the top 986 votes from Long’s pile or we can sort through every single ballot paper and distribute the votes proportionally. Thankfully in Northern Ireland we use the latter, more fair, method. 

 

The record shows that, of these 986 votes, Peter McReynolds, the other Alliance candidate, received 791 of them. How is this worked out? We have to divide the number of surplus votes by the quota. So in this case it would be 986➗7,209=0.13677348. So imagine these votes being separated into piles and counted again, expect every ballot paper now counts for just 0.13677348 of a vote. Multiply the number of votes in that pile by 0.13677348 and we get the number of transferred votes. You can see how this works below. I have reversed this formula to show how many ballot papers had a number 2(or 3 given that Joanne Bunting cannot receive transfers) for each candidate. Note my numbers are not precise because I have rounded to 3 decimal places when working this out. So while around 5,774 Naomi Long  voters transferred to their second preference to Peter McReynolds, this means he received 791 additional votes. This may sound complicated but it is the fairest way to distribute a surplus.

 

You can see how I have shown this in the image below.

 

 

In the next stage we eliminate Eoin MacNeill. He has only received 3.6 votes from Naomi Long’s transfers and Joanne Bunting’s surplus of 44 cannot save him. This continues until we have 5 candidates elected by reaching the quota or by simply having more votes than the final candidate remaining. To summarise, Peter McReynolds the third candidate is elected after several other candidates are eliminated and their votes are transferred. John Ross of the TUV is eliminated on stage 9 and his transfers are enough to push both David Brooks of the DUP and Andy Allen of the UUP over the quota. Brian Smyth of the Greens is left 3,595 votes short of the quota and, in this case, every candidate elected reached the quota. You can see the full breakdown of the stages below, assuming the picture quality is good enough!

 

 

One point of confusion for many people is what happens if they don’t transfer. There are myths out there that a party or candidate can somehow claim your votes, this isn’t true. If you look along the bottom of the image you can see the row labelled, ‘non transferrable’. If you look to stage 8 you can see that when Mairead O’Donnell of Sinn Féin was eliminated 574.8 of her 1,509 votes could not be transferred. This means than her voters either had no preferences after voting for her, or all other preferences had been for candidates already elected or eliminated. These votes simply disappear and will not count towards any other candidates total. I can only assume that these 574 or so voters did not like the remaining candidates and did not feel they could adequately represent them.

 

The STV system is designed to make your vote count. We do not need to vote against certain candidates in order to help someone else win, instead we can vote for our favourites in the knowledge that if they do not win then our votes can count towards another candidate who might win and stop someone we do not like from winning. Smaller parties tend to fair better in the STV system because there is no such thing as a wasted vote. Voters are able to vote for them and not fear their vote is worthless. 

 

I hope this provides an easy way to explain the STV system.