STV Tally Analogy

Each candidate puts out a box for ballots. A voter puts his ballot in his favorite candidate's box. The ballots are counted. If the ballots in the box equal the quota number of votes needed to win a seat, it wins. If it gets too many votes, the voter gets a share of the excess transferred to his next choice. If it gets too few votes, he moves his ballot to another box. OR he waits, hoping others will move their ballots to his favorite box. To break that deadlock, STV says: If a round of counting ballots finds no winner, the box with the fewest votes must be eliminated. Its ballots transfer to each voter's next choice -- and the ballots are counted again.

Below you can see a whole STV tally turning ballots into reps; 12 ballots add up to 1 rep.
36 votes / 3 seats = 12 votes for 1 seat.

Neighboring candidates have similar opinions so most voters rank them close together. But the 2 interest groups are far apart. Their positions jump from B to R.

STV Protects Majority Rights: The old plurality rule elects A, B, and S. So group I gets 2 reps for 12 voters while group II gets only 1 rep for 24 voters. That is not fair and it does not lead to majority policies. But group I gets no rep if group II gives 2 votes to R, 7 to S, 8 to T, and 7 to U. Plurality rules are erratic as well as unfair. This shows the importance of ranking candidates and transferring votes.

An STV, tally step 1, 12K
.

STV step 2, 12K
.

STV step 3, 12K
.

STV step 4, 12K
.

An STV tally, step 5, 12K

Click here to receive the STV tally formatted onto 1 page MS Word 4 (Macintosh).