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Voting matters — To advance the understanding of preferential voting systems

Issue 27, September 2009

(Complete issue in PDF, 448KB.)

Editorial

There are three items in this issue:

The paper by Joseph Durham and Peter Lindener Moderated Differential Pairwise Tallying considers a method of electing candidates using a preferential ballot which is quite unlike STV. The paper details the rationale behind the method, using Borda scores and Condorcet as starting points.
As with all such methods, it is difficult to convince people to use a new system, even given a detailed analysis of its effects. How do voters react to knowing that later preferences can affect the earlier ones?
In the second paper, David Hill considers the problem of filling a casual vacancy when an election uses the Meek algorithm for STV.
The last paper, by Philip Kestelman, presents a detailed analysis of the proportionality attained when using the Alternative Vote. This is particularly relevant at the moment since the use of AV has been proposed for the House of Commons.

New Zealand election rules

It has recently been noted that the formulation of the Meek rules given in the New Zealand regulations is incorrect in significant ways. However, this is not as worrying as it might appear, since it is thought that the actual computer software used to implement the rules actually implements the Meek algorithm correctly.

Postscript

This is the last issue of Voting matters which I will edit. An announcement of the new editor is expected shortly.

Voting matters originally started by reproducing documents which were hard to obtain, like Meek's description of his method. Subsequently, articles were often papers presented to the Electoral Reform Society's Technical Committee.

After some initial difficulties, a strategy was developed which used one anonymous referee for each submitted paper. The referee was almost always, but not exclusively, an author of a Voting matters paper. I would like to thank all those who acted as a referee, since they performed a vital role and it was essential for me to trust their conclusions.

A review of Voting matters undertaken by the Trust resulted in a change to the wording to ensure that the scope was preferential voting systems, not just Single Transferable Vote.

Having a free journal published via the Internet has obvious advantages; there need be no page limit and issues can appear when there is material, not just on a certain date. Hence, although the dates of issues are somewhat erratic, we have never had a significant backlog.

There are two people I need to thank by name: Paul Wilder for the website provision and the reproduction of some copies, and David Hill who has carefully proof-read each issue.

Readers are reminded that views expressed in Voting matters by contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the McDougall Trust or its trustees.

Papers with citations

Joseph W. Durham and Peter Lindener: Moderated Differential Pairwise Tallying: A Voter Specified Hybrid of Ranking by Pairwise Comparisons and Cardinal Utility Sums (p1-21, PDF 484KB)
I D Hill: Casual vacancies and the Meek method. (p22-26, PDF 76KB)
Philip Kestelman: Alternative Voting in Proportion. (p27-36, PDF 140KB)

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