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How exactly are votes counted in Irish Elections?

turgon

I know the business with PR-STV but Ive just one question on its specific implementation in Ireland.

Supposing I vote 1 for candidate A. He is then eliminated and my second preference goes to candidate B. However if candidate B is already elected, what happens? Does my vote go straight to my third preference? Or is it transfered to B and then 'diluted' before going to C?

I know with some PR-STV counters (like one I did in PHP), every ballot of an elected candidate is transfered with a new weight so that the combined weight of all ballots equals the excess (the Gregory method). I dont know if they do this with paper counting because it involves people getting things like 645.445 votes. Then in some counters, all ballot weights for a candidate are re-evaluated when said candidate gets additional votes in rounds after being elected (Meek's method I think).

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Jack Sheehan

Any surplus votes for an elected candidate go to the next preference. Thats how Cyprian Brady got elected with Bertie's surplus.

turgon

Heres a voting card for the June Euros:

1 Colm Burke
2 Sean Kelly
3 Brian Crowley
4 Alan Kelly

So if Colm Burke is eliminated at a stage where both S Kelly and Crowley are already elected, my vote goes straight to Alan Kelly?

LostinBlanch

Not necessarily AFAIK not all votes are automatically transferred. There are vagaries within the system that mean allvotes aren't transferred down the line. I remember hearing this on RTE years ago. I think this is done for convenience reasons i.e. to stop the 9th or 10th count! There is some special formula to determine how many votes are transferred.

Someone who is a tallyman would be able to explain how and why.

I think that they should all be transferred to whoever you voted for all the way down the ballot.

Of course if I'm wrong feel free to correct me.

turgon

Well I know when the initial surplus is transfered its done randomly, so if the surplus is 500 then 500 ballots are plucked out at random. But I dont know about any additional surplus.

Need to maximise the anti-sinnot vote ya see

P. Breathnach

All votes for candidates who are eliminated are transferred to the next available candiate. Thus, in turgon's hypothetical cae, the vote would indeed go to Alan Kelly.

It's different with a surplus. If a candidate is elected with 800 votes more than the quota, 800 papers are randomly drawn from that candidate's pile and they are distributed to the next available candidates. There is a possibility that the random selection does not exactly reflect the pattern of the votes cast, so there can be a small element of chance involved.

[In elections to Seanad Eireann, that chance element does not exist, because they allocate the surplus more exactly, after calculating all the next preferences and apportioning the surplus arithmetically rather than by drawing random papers. That was supposed to come into Dáil elections when electronic voting was introduced.]

turgon

You see, one of the advantages of PR-STV is that you can vote a little tactically.

For example, based on trends Burke, A Kelly and Sinnot will be competing for the 3rd Ireland South seat. My logic was to give my second preference to A Kelly, so that if Burke is eliminated it comes down to Sinnot and A Kelly and my vote will work against Sinnot.

But if it works on a system of "available" hopefuls, and that already elected candidates are not "available," then I may as well throw down my true preference and S Kelly and Crowley will be skipped.

Sleepy

As far as I can make out the best manner of voting in Ireland is to fill the ballot starting with the candidate you least want elected and working up to the candidate you'd most like to see elected.

Fortunately, our candidates typically line themselves up for this type of voting because there's so rarely one you actually want to see elected... it's more a matter of "which of the following is least offensive to you?"

turgon

The "least worst" as I call it.

Jo King

The method of distribution in elections other than for the Senate, is proportional division of surplus after the first count, top of the bundle for the remaining counts. The votes of eliminated candidates go to the next preference. The votes are kept in the order they have been opened. This leads to a random element, since the votes at the top of the bundle may not necessarily represent an exact cross section.
If the quota is 10000 and Candidate A recieves 12000 first preference on the first count with 6000 second preferences to Candidate B and 6000 second preferences to Candidate C, the surplus of 2000 will be divided equally with Candidate B getting 1000 and Candidate getting 1000. They will be taken from the bundle of Candidate A's votes. This is effectively random since it depends on the order in which the boxes were opened.
If Candidate B happened to have had 9800 votes on the first count, he will be elected with a surplus of 800 votes. The top 800 votes from his bundle which will be all votes he got from Candidate A will be distributed. The second preferences in his original 9800 votes are ignored. The electronic voting system was intended to have proportionate distribution all the way through.
Votes transferring to eliminated or elected candidates go to the next preference indicated.

LostinBlanch

Jo King wrote: »

The electronic voting system was intended to have proportionate distribution all the way through.
Votes transferring to eliminated or elected candidates go to the next preference indicated.

That's not what I heard, or think I heard(!) seeing as the RTE interview was years ago when electronic voting was still looking like it'd go ahead. In that interview they mentioned that the electronic voting still had the same practice as normal voting i.e. in your example the 800 surplus votes of candidate B would only be counted and not all the votes. The interviewer made a particular point of this fact and not having proportionate counting all the way through. I mean, come on that would have been too sensible, right?

P. Breathnach

LostinBlanch wrote: »

That's not what I heard, or think I heard(!) seeing as the RTE interview was years ago when electronic voting was still looking like it'd go ahead. In that interview they mentioned that the electronic voting still had the same practice as normal voting i.e. in your example the 800 surplus votes of candidate B would only be counted and not all the votes. The interviewer made a particular point of this fact and not having proportionate counting all the way through. I mean, come on that would have been too sensible, right?

I think you remember correctly.

The way the law is framed at the moment, the random element is there. Unless the law is changed, it has to stay there. There was an intention to amend the law in conjunction with the changeover. Events got in the way.

Our man in Havana

In a recount you could get a totally different result as a different load of surplus papers could be selected.

P. Breathnach

Bond-007 wrote: »

In a recount you could get a totally different result as a different load of surplus papers could be selected.

Not so. They keep the same bundles. It must be hell to keep track of, but apparently they do so.

Jo King

LostinBlanch wrote: »

That's not what I heard, or think I heard(!) seeing as the RTE interview was years ago when electronic voting was still looking like it'd go ahead. In that interview they mentioned that the electronic voting still had the same practice as normal voting i.e. in your example the 800 surplus votes of candidate B would only be counted and not all the votes. The interviewer made a particular point of this fact and not having proportionate counting all the way through. I mean, come on that would have been too sensible, right?

I heard it being discussed on RTE. It is impossible to carry out the electronic count any other way than proportionately. The interviewers on RTE did not have a clue. Charlie McCreevy when being interviewed told them the correct version and they still managed to get it wrong. It was touted by Fianna fail as being one of the advantages of electronic voting.

ninty9er

If you have candidates A, B, C, D, E and F, with 4 seats to fill, with a quota of 9,500 for example

Count 1 Count 2 Count 3 Count 4
A 13,000 -3,500
B 3,500 1,750
C 4,900 269 -5,169
D 8,000 942 800 -242
E 6,350 1,400
F 7,000 1,050

So for count 2, all 13,000 of As 1st preference is counted and a the percentage of 2s for B, C, D, E and F and that is transferred from the 3,500.

If 6,500 of the 13,000 show a 2nd preference for B, 1,750 votes are transferred to B; 3,500 show a 2nd preference for D, 942 votes are transferred to D; C has a showing of 1,000 2s on As ballots and gets 269. The rest are non transferrable.

So as nobody was elected on count 2, the Returning Officer will eliminate C as the candidate with the lowest number of votes. 5,169 votes are to be redistributed. Now there comes an issue here. There are 269 votes that will show a 3rd preference that have to be transferred as well as the original 4,900.

Count 3
from the 4,900, 1,769 are non transferrable. 1,400 go to E, 800 go to D, 150 to A (non-transferrable) and 1,050 to F.

D Elected on Count 3, surplus 242 redistributed at random from the 3s in the bundle of 800 received from C.

A & D are now elected....and the process keeps going. will be eliminated next as B cannot surpass E or F. At this point Bs surplus is redistributed. However as there are only 2 candidates left for 2 seats E & F are deemed elected whether or not they reach quota.

turgon

My issue was with a ballot with C number one and A number 2. Apparently this ballot goes straight to third preference.

Mike 1972

As far as I can make out the best manner of voting in Ireland is to fill the ballot starting with the candidate you least want elected and working up to the candidate you'd most like to see elected.

You dont have to have any preference to the candidate (or candidates) you dislike the most. Indeed if there is one candidate you particularly want to keep out the most effective way of doing so is to give a preference to every candidate except him or her.

Our man in Havana

Of course you are entitled to ignore all the parties instructions and just give a number 1 and leave it at that.

mewso

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/government-in-ireland/elections-and-referenda/voting/proportional_representation

ardmacha

Of course you are entitled to ignore all the parties instructions and just give a number 1 and leave it at that.

You can, but why not use the system?

Is it the case that in the North that a surplus is distributed by counting all of the votes and then working out a proportion rather than just taking a sample?

Our man in Havana

The problem is that a sample may be heavily biased depending on which box it came from.

mewso

ardmacha wrote: »

You can, but why not use the system?

Is it the case that in the North that a surplus is distributed by counting all of the votes and then working out a proportion rather than just taking a sample?

Thats how it's done here. It's in physically transferring the selected votes to the next candidate that the random factor comes in.

If A gets 3000 votes in count 1 which is 500 votes over the quota all 3000 of A's votes have their second preferences counted and then these values will be divided by 6. So if candidate B gets 600 2nd preferences in that 3000 then B will get 100 transferred and physically these will have to be randomly chosen.

In later counts only the votes that get a candidate over the quota get counted for 2nd preferences but in a similar way as above all are counted and the correct ratio will be applied. Have a look at the link I posted above.

CtrlSource

Thought i had a reasonably good understanding of the system until i read this thread! *head spins* Think i'll go grab a coffee and come back for another read

strombone

You should indicate no preference for any candidate you do not want elected - not even your lowest preference, as ultimately it could assist in getting him/her elected.

Select those candidates you deem suitable to be elected, and then rank (only) those candidates to your preference.

turgon wrote: »

My issue was with a ballot with C number one and A number 2. Apparently this ballot goes straight to third preference.

When this example ballot is examined after C's elimination, and it's seen that the second preference went to A - who has already been elected - does the ballot paper then get put onto the voter's third preference's pile, or does it remain on candidate C's table as a non-transferable vote?

P. Breathnach

strombone wrote: »

... When this example ballot is examined after C's elimination, and it's seen that the second preference went to A - who has already been elected - does the ballot paper then get put onto the voter's third preference's pile, or does it remain on candidate C's table as a non-transferable vote?

It goes to the third preference.

Mike 1972

Bond-007 wrote: »

Of course you are entitled to ignore all the parties instructions and just give a number 1 and leave it at that.

How does it work if one candidate gets elected double (or more) of the quota (as often happens) but most/all of his votes are "non transferrable" due to supporters not giving any preferences to other candidates ?

turgon

They are discounted. Ie a proportion of his votes will simply not be transfered

Sleepy

strombone wrote: »

Select those candidates you deem suitable to be elected, and then rank (only) those candidates to your preference.

Unfortunately that would lead to a lot of blank ballot papers...