Surpluses are treated differently from eliminated candidates in the election

So that we stay on the very specific topic about why the eliminated candidates are treated differently from the surplus of elected candidates, I have moved the related issues to a separate thread:

Why are some surplus votes used twice

There are a few interacting factors here, the quota, the fact that physical ballots are transferred and the design of the system to capture the representative view of the electorate. I've never understood this "representative view" business. My understanding of the logic of PR is that if Sean...
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Brendan Burgess said:
And, in the case of a surplus, you are imposing a preference on those voters who chose not express a preference.
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Itchy said:
I don't agree/see it as anybody having a view "imposed" on them. From the voters perspective, they have expressed a preference, which is that once their only preferred candidate is elected, they are indifferent to the other candidates or subsequent vote distribution. Should their candidate be eliminated, their vote becomes ineffective and does not effect the outcome of the rest of the election. This voter should be 100% satisfied.
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And round we go. The voter cannot feel imposed upon if the candidate they voted for gets elected.

In your Galway council election you are are suggesting that even though there are voters who expressed a full list of preferences, we should select 20 ballots from the voters that are indifferent to the remaining election and reduce the sample?
 
Hi, I am just trying to learn a bit about the STV system and the discussion has been very useful.

In relation to the main question, could it be due to the fact that surpluses are distributed based on a 'sampling' basis, while votes from eliminated candidates are redistributed in their entirety?

For example, if John got 100 votes surplus, and only 5 of these expressed an second preference for Jane, then it does indeed seem unfair that Jane would get these 100 votes (violating the 'non-preference' of the other voters as the OP suggests). However, what if within John's X votes prior to the surplus being achieved (say 1000), there were a large number of transfers to Jane that aren't being seen simply due to the order that the votes have been stacked on top of each other, then this would also seem unfair if she only got '5' of the surplus. So maybe this method of redistributing the entirety of the surplus according to its proportionality is meant to counteract the fact that this is only a 'sample' of the next preferences?
 
Itchy said:
The voter cannot feel imposed upon if the candidate they voted for gets elected.
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This is great for trying to clarify my argument.

I vote no. 1 for A, and make no further preference.
you vote no. 1 for A, and No. 2 for B.

A gets 5,000 votes, 1,000 above the quota of 4,000

So your vote goes
A: 0.8
B: 0.2

My vote should go
A: 0.8
non-transferable: 0.2

But instead, it goes
A: .08
and then the 0.2 is distributed among the remaining candidates.
 
Dotegnomes said:
In relation to the main question, could it be due to the fact that surpluses are distributed based on a 'sampling' basis, while votes from eliminated candidates are redistributed in their entirety?
Click to expand...

I don't fully follow your argument, but it would not hold in the most material cases.

For example, Michael McGrath's brother was elected with two quotas. So there was only one pile. The issue of the "last parcel of votes" is discussed in this thread:

Why are some surplus votes used twice

There are a few interacting factors here, the quota, the fact that physical ballots are transferred and the design of the system to capture the representative view of the electorate. I've never understood this "representative view" business. My understanding of the logic of PR is that if Sean...
www.askaboutmoney.com
 
Say there are 4 seats and 5 candidates.

There are 1000 votes.
999 vote candidate A 1st pref only.
1 voter, votes A-E, 1-5 in order of preference.
The seats go to A,B,C & D.

Who is being imposed upon here? What is the fair outcome of this election?
 
Brendan Burgess said:
This is great for trying to clarify my argument.

I vote no. 1 for A, and make no further preference.
you vote no. 1 for A, and No. 2 for B.

A gets 5,000 votes, 1,000 above the quota of 4,000

So your vote goes
A: 0.8
B: 0.2

My vote should go
A: 0.8
non-transferable: 0.2

But instead, it goes
A: .08
and then the 0.2 is distributed among the remaining candidates.
Click to expand...
There are no fractions of votes. A ballot paper either gets transferred or it doesn't.

Your vote goes to A and that's the end of it (as you would have intended by expressing no further preference). His vote has a 20% chance of going to B and an 80% chance of staying with A.

What's gained by picking votes that don't want to be transferred as part of a surplus? It seems more logical that they stay with the only candidate that they wanted.
 
Itchy said:
Say there are 4 seats and 5 candidates.

There are 1000 votes.
999 vote candidate A 1st pref only.
1 voter, votes A-E, 1-5 in order of preference.
The seats go to A,B,C & D.

Who is being imposed upon here? What is the fair outcome of this election?
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This is obviously an extreme situation that wouldn't ever happen in reality but I don't think C or D necessarily get elected here.

The quota is 201. On the first count, A is elected with a surplus of 799. On the second count, 1 vote transfers to B and 798 are ineffective. On the third count, no one has reached the quota. B is elected without reaching the quota and C, D and E are level on 0 votes.
 
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Have to say I'm with Brendan on this issue - the 'non transferable' is just another 'candidate' in my view and should be allocated an appropriate proportion of votes when surpluses are being allocated...
 
Bank Manager said:
Have to say I'm with Brendan on this issue - the 'non transferable' is just another 'candidate' in my view and should be allocated an appropriate proportion of votes when surpluses are being allocated...
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Hi BM

This is a great way of looking at it.

Here are the results of a scenario where everyone who voted for A, also had a second preference.

A got 1,000 votes.
Quota: 800
Surplus: 200

1718441157496.png
So the surplus has been distributed in full and properly.

Now imagine that instead of voting for E, those 200 voters expressed no second preference.

1718441276093.png
Now, each candidate has had their votes inflated.

This is clearly wrong.

Brendan
 
Boss you are right. Surpluses are treated differently from eliminations. Surpluses can and often are transferred in full. Eliminations would only be transferred in full if everyone had indicated a next preference.
One way to eliminate the anomaly would be to transfer 100% of an elimination by "gearing up" valid transfers, which does not seem right and would be quite difficult physically as the process involves parcels of actual votes each counting as 1 - there are no fractions. Maybe a computerised system or AI would do the job ;)
The other alternative is to scale down the surpluses for non-transferables similar to the Scottish and Australian systems.
So if A gets 10,000 votes and the quota is 8,000 but there are 5,000 non-transferables the Irish system would transfer 2,000 of the surplus but the Scottish system would only transfer 50% of that i.e. 1,000.

If I voted for A, I might feel that 20% of my vote was redundant and so would see at as "fair" that I would have a 20% chance of being transferred. That would be the case in the Scottish system (1,000/5,000). But in the Irish system my chances would be 40% (2,000/5,000).
Clearly this gearing bonus suits parties looking for more than one seat and with dependable transfers.
 
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Thanks Duke.

"gearing up" the eliminations illustrates nicely how wrong the Irish system is. Votes are geared up in the distribution of surpluses, but it's hard for people to see why this is wrong.

A gets 600 votes and is eliminated.

His second preferences are as follows:

B 300
C 100
Not transferred :200

Under the Irish system for eliminations, which is fair, B gets 300 votes on the second count.

But if we applied the grossing up used in the distribution of surpluses, the Transfer value would be "surplus"/total transferable votes
which would be 600/400
which is 1.5

So B would get 450 transfers from A
And C would get 150 transfers.

Which is obviously wrong.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
But if we applied the grossing up used in the distribution of surpluses, the Transfer value would be "surplus"/total transferable votes
which would be 600/400
which is 1.5
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As I have already contributed to the substantive point raised, I wont do further, but Brendan is repeating this example ad nauseam. It's a false equivalence. On elimination, the candidate is NOT elected, on the distribution of the surplus, the desired candidate IS elected. The voter who is non-transferable at either stage is fully satisfied. In the former case, its obvious why a voter would not be satisfied and would be absurd. You may as well say that because the turnout was only 50%, we'll "gross up" the first preferences to reflect the entire electorate. Absurd.
 
Interesting. I don't see the false equivalence and obviously the people who designed the far more logical Scottish and Australian systems don't see it either. They treat the surplus and the eliminated candidate's votes the same way.

Itchy said:
The voter who is non-transferable at either stage is fully satisfied.
Click to expand...

But the voter who voted A number 1, and B number 2, by your reasoning, is also fully satisfied as his candidate got elected.

The logical conclusion of your argument would be that there should be no transfers of surpluses.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Interesting. I don't see the false equivalence and obviously the people who designed the far more logical Scottish and Australian systems don't see it either. They treat the surplus and the eliminated candidate's votes the same way.
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I think this is the point. We do not definitively have the perfect PR/STV system while the Kilties and Wallabies have a flawed system. I agree with Brendan that the K/W system is more logically consistent. It's not a big deal though and there are other aspects which can be questioned like taking the transfers from the top of the pile, rather than proportionately across all transfers or subsequent surpluses being transferred according to the last parcel that triggered the surplus, both of which presumably would be addressed if it was all done by computer.
So I don't really think there is a strong case for candidates to argue that they would have been elected if it had been the more logically consistent K/W system. The rules is the rules and the law is the law.
 
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If you think eliminated votes and surplus votes should be transferred in proportion to that candidate's total votes, then yes there's an inconsistency. If you think eliminated votes and surplus votes should be transferred whenever they're transferable, then there is no inconsistency.
 
Hi John

But non-transferable surplus votes are being transferred. That is clearly (to me) wrong.

It would also be wrong to transfer non-transferable votes for an eliminated candidate.

So what they are doing is inconsistent.

I would fix it by stopping the allocation of non-transferable surplus to other candidates. This is what they do in Scotland and in Australia.

I have seen no rationale for the way we do it in Ireland.

Brendan
 
This is quite straightforward, I'm surprised that I struggled with it at first.
What to do with a surplus? Who "owns" the surplus? Obviously those who voted for the successful candidate.
Some of those did not want their votes to be transferred. The Scottish/Australian system obeys their wishes.
Under the Irish system, if you had indicated no further preference, your vote could effectively* be transferred, at least in part, to even the Raving Looney party. And this is true even if the transferrable votes are less than the surplus.
Other than some sort of "punishment" for not filling out your voting paper, I can see no justification whatever.

* it is transferred in the same proportion as those who had indicated a preference
 
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