Irish Proportional Representation - does anything after #2 actually matter?

hatrickpatrick

There are a lot of media explanations for our system floating around at the moment, but they all just say "surplus votes have their second preference distributed" and "if you don't make the quota, ALL your second preferences are distributed".

They stop here though.

What happens to your #3, #4, #5 and so on? Are these ever counted? How does it work?

Are you better off just choosing a 1 and 2? Is there any point in continuing down the ballot paper?

invinciblePRSTV

"An elected candidate's surplus is distributed based on the next available preferences for

continuing candidates (i.e. candidates not elected or excluded) contained in the last

parcel of votes that brought the elected candidate over the quota"

http://www.environ.ie/en/LocalGovernment/Voting/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,1895,en.pdf

Denerick

I wrote an essay for college about the introduction of PR following the Civil War in Ireland. I only pretended I understood it then. I'm as confused now as I ever was. I think that is the intent of the system. It is painfully, confusingly fair. So fair that in many cases you end up voting for someone you had no intention of voting for.

For example, in the 1923 election Ernie O'Malley (Republican, anti treaty) was elected with the help of Richard Mulcahy's votes (Pro Treaty minister for defence) Strange.

Madd Finn

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

There are a lot of media explanations for our system floating around at the moment, but they all just say "surplus votes have their second preference distributed" and "if you don't make the quota, ALL your second preferences are distributed".

They stop here though.

What happens to your #3, #4, #5 and so on? Are these ever counted? How does it work?

Are you better off just choosing a 1 and 2? Is there any point in continuing down the ballot paper?

I haven't bought any papers recently so haven't seen this year's "media explanations" as you call them but when I was in need of such articles fado fado I found them to be most helpful and informative.

The Irish STV system basically asks you to "give my vote to my first preference candidate. If he doesn't need it give it to my second preference candidate. If she doesn't need it give it to my third, and so on."

Let's say you vote for Andrew, Brian, Celia, Derek and Edwina in that order.

For every constituency in every election the returning officer calculates a quota which is obtained by the formula Total valid poll/Number of seats in constituency +1 plus one.

So if there is a valid poll of 50,000 in a four seat constituency the quota will be 10,001. (50,000/(4+1) +1) If you reach or exceed that quote of votes, you get elected.

Let's say at the end of the first ballot (the counting of first preference votes) Brian has topped the poll with 12,000 votes and Andrew is just shy of the quote with 9,500 votes. Let's also assume that Celia is bottom of the poll with just 800 first preference votes.

Now the first thing to do is distribute Brian's surplus, ie the 1,999 votes that he "didn't need" because he only required 10,001 to get elected.

These are distributed according to the second preferences indicated on the ballot papers of those who gave Brian their first preference vote. In practice, I think the counters just take the first 1,999 papers of Brian's pile and distribute them accordingly. It is statistically valid to do this, although I believe the much maligned electronic counting machines actually work out a proportional figure based on all the voting papers.

eg. they work out the percentage of all the seccond preference votes that went to each candidate and then apply that percentage to the surplus figure (1,999 in this case).

Let's say after this distribution of votes, nobody else has been elected. The returning officer now eliminates the bottom ranked candidate (Celia) and distributes ALL of her votes. She didn't need any because she didn't get elected. That is, he distributes all of the votes where people recorded a second preference.

If any of her second preference votes were for Brian, then clearly he doesn't need them because he has already been elected. So in those cases the vote would transfer to the third preference on the ballot.

Let's say that after this exercise, Andrew has now been elected with a surplus of 500.

These surplus votes now go, in the first instance, to the second preference options on Andrew's ballot papers. But let's say that in some cases the second preference was for Brian. He's already been elected so they go to the third preference. Let's say in some cases this was Celia. She's already been eliminated so they go to the fourth preference candidate. And so on.

See how it works?

Simples.

Eliot Rosewater

Denerick wrote: »

It is painfully, confusingly fair.

Well, that depends on your definition of "fair". Is it "fair" that the taxpayers of the country have had to pay for the whims of Jackie Healy-Rae? He is partly a product of the PR-STV system, after all.

Also, there's been a very active thread about the Boards.ie PR-STV poll and, to quote DeVore (which I hope he doesn't mind me doing), "I learned something new during this election. I learned that our PR system is carved from pure fail. Oh and that no one seems to know how it actually is supposed to work, including the people implementing it for real." The coders involved got in contact with different returning officers, and they gave multiple conflicting explanations of its workings. I don't know if that point is relevant though...

Anyway, if you're looking for a good explanation of it you could read the relevant chapter of Politics in the Republic of Ireland. It's an excellent book.

Denerick

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Well, that depends on your definition of "fair". Is it "fair" that the taxpayers of the country have had to pay for the whims of Jackie Healy-Rae? He is partly a product of the PR-STV system, after all.

Jacky Healy Rae is a product of the Irish people. If no-one voted for him he wouldn't be elected.

Eliot Rosewater

Denerick wrote: »

Jacky Healy Rae is a product of the Irish people. If no-one voted for him he wouldn't be elected.

Yeah, but you gotta admit that the voting system is a factor too. It encourages certain behaviours.

Denerick

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Yeah, but you gotta admit that the voting system is a factor too. It encourages certain behaviours.

True, but if the people of Kerry didn't want Jacky Healy Rae then he wouldn't be elected. End of. Think of all the charlatan independents that run every election. There is a reason that he got in.

recedite

Healy Rae would be elected in a UK style first past the post system, just the same as by STV.

But, Healy Rae types could be reduced in number by having a national list system in place for some candidates, whereby the party gets a vote and appoints their man later. Under that system Gormley would probably still be with us as a single Green TD. At least one candidate per constituency would still have to be elected by locals though, to allow for independents and others with strong localised support.