The following is a new primer as we did not consider preferential voting a factor in the Democracy Papers of 2007. This is the third of the updated series.
Preferential voting is a system that is also known as alternative voting, instant run-off, ranked voting, transferable voting and other variables that have been considered and then forgotten. It is not as wide-spread a type of voting around the world as proportional or first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting.
The main concerns with this type of system is that there have to be many rules developed for the voters because of the ease of manipulating the vote and the confusion in the counting systems involved.
The basic premise is that the voter indicates a first, second, third or more choices among the various candidates. In some jurisdictions, the voter must indicate a number for all candidates to prevent what is called ‘plumping’ for a single candidate or multiple candidates.
The counting is based on creating a majority vote for a winner by adding the second choice of the lowest scoring candidate and adding those second choice votes to the other candidates’ totals. This can continue, taking the votes of lowest scoring candidates until one candidate has a majority. This is why the system is ridiculed as a method whereby ‘the losers are the choosers.’ Votes for losing candidates, in effect, determine the ultimate winner.
Proponents of proportional voting tend to reject preferential voting because the system can actually create the opposite results from proportional representation. It tends to over inflate the winning party’s share of the seats. A good example of this can be postulated for the recent federal election in Canada. There were three strong parties at the beginning of the election. All three of these parties were, at certain times during the campaign, in the lead in the polls.
But what was really happening was that it was a choice between two parties to remove the third from government. If there had been a preferential system of voting in that case, the winning party would have won as much as 65 per cent of the seats in parliament (versus the actual of 54 per cent), the former government party about 20 per cent (actual 29 per cent) and the former opposition party as few as 10 per vent (actual 13 per cent). That did not happen under FPTP and certainly would not have happened under proportional voting.
Many people think of preferential voting as an instant run-off. It is not. It does not allow the opportunity to consider the results of the initial voting. It is this consideration that makes a second or even third round of voting a much more acceptable solution than trying to do it all at once.
The reason for the rejection of run-off elections in Canada has been because of the perceived high costs of conducting a second vote. That is no longer the case today as Internet voting has become a practical solution. Instead of large numbers of voting locations, Canadians can now exercise their vote from home, at work, at public libraries, government buildings or from their smart telephone. It is easy for Elections Canada to update security systems as the need arises.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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