{"id":2761,"date":"2015-07-18T14:26:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T21:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/?page_id=2761"},"modified":"2015-07-18T14:40:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T21:40:04","slug":"how-does-pacificas-single-transferable-voting-system-work","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/?page_id=2761","title":{"rendered":"STV Voting"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/audiolucistore\/11046790073\"<\/a>

From www.audio-luci-store.it via Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

How Does Pacifica’s Single Transferable Voting System Work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each voter has a single vote, but that vote may end up being divided into fractions of a vote that help elect more than one candidate.<\/p>\n

Voters indicate their preferences for candidates by ranking them (1st choice, 2nd choice, etc.). A voter\u2019s alternate rankings can be thought of as backup or contingency choices to make sure a member\u2019s vote isn\u2019t wasted on a sure winner who has a surplus of votes, or a sure loser, who can\u2019t possibly win.<\/p>\n

Initially, only the voter\u2019s first choice is counted. Only if that first-choice candidate has more than enough votes to win, or if that candidate has so little support that he or she can\u2019t win, will a ballot count towards the election of a lower preference.<\/p>\n

The details are spelled out in Article 15, Section 1 of the Pacifica Bylaws, as summarized:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. First a \u2018winning threshold\u2019 is calculated as:
    \n[(the total number of valid ballots cast) \u00f7 (1 + the number of seats to be filled)] + 1.
    \nThis is the minimum number of votes a candidate needs to get elected. Any candidates who have enough first choice votes to reach the winning threshold are declared elected.<\/li>\n
  2. If a candidate receives more votes than needed to win a seat, the \u201csurplus\u201d portion of each vote in a winning candidate\u2019s pile is transferred to each of those voters\u2019 next preference candidate so that each vote is fully used.<\/li>\n
  3. If there are still unfilled places after the first preferences have been dealt with and any surpluses transferred, then the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and voters who favored that candidate have their votes transferred to the voters\u2019 second preferences. Any candidate who now has more than the winning threshold is declared elected.<\/li>\n
  4. This process continues until all of the seats are filled.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How Does Pacifica’s Single Transferable Voting System Work? Each voter has a single vote, but that vote may end up being divided into fractions of a vote that help elect more than one candidate. Voters indicate their preferences for candidates … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2761","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2763,"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2761\/revisions\/2763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unitedforcommunityradio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}