[Election-Methods] Dopp: 2. ?Requires centralized vote counting procedures at the state-level"

[James Gilmour]

Raphfrk, you are absolutely correct in your 99% supposition.  The voting system for the election of the President of Ireland is the
Single Transferable Vote (STV) applied to a single vacancy.  In current US-speak, that is "IRV".

The full counting rules are here:
  Presidential Elections Act, 1937
  THIRD SCHEDULE
  RULES FOR COUNTING THE VOTES.
     http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1937/en/act/pub/0032/gen_6.html#gen_6


Rule 5 deals with exclusions when no candidate has attained the quota.

Rule 5(3) permits the Returning Officer to exclude together the two or more candidates with the fewest votes when the total of their
votes is less than the number of votes held by the next highest candidate.

This is what happened in the 1997 election when three Independent candidates were excluded together at the second stage, and their
votes were transferred to the remaining two candidates.  That count has given some people the impression that the voting method is
the Contingent Vote.  But they have made that mistake simply because they do not understand how STV = IRV works.

The provision of Rule 5(3) is standard in all British and Irish versions of STV for manual counts.  The provision to exclude two or
more candidates together simplifies and shortens a manual count  -  much less paper handling.  Such a provision is not necessary if
you are using only computerised counting  -  but that is not the norm in the UK or Ireland.  So you will find the multiple-exclusion
provision in all of our versions of STV except for the version used for the Local Government elections in Scotland (which was
multi-member STV-PR and was computerised because of the WIGM rules for the transfers of surpluses).

The 1997 election is the ONLY Irish Presidential election in which there has been more than three candidates, so it is the only
election in which the exclusion rules could be applied fully.

Regards	
James Gilmour


> -----Original Message-----
> From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com 
> [mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On 
> Behalf Of raphfrk at netscape.net
> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 2:01 AM
> To: abd at lomaxdesign.com; greg at somervilleirv.org; 
> election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Subject: Re: [Election-Methods]Dopp: 2. ?Requires centralized 
> vote counting procedures at the state-level"
> 
> 
> > The method used in Ireland is the Contingent Vote. There
> > cannot be more than two rounds of counting, because all 
> > but the top two are eliminated in one step, if there is no 
> > majority in the first round. 
> 
> Sorry to jump in on a (relatively) minor point.  I am 99% sure 
> this is not correct.  The constitution requires that PR-STV be 
> used to elect the president.  Ofc, this can be defined by the 
> Dail via legislation, but I don't think switching to contingent vote 
> would be considered consistent with the constitution.
> 
> 
> I think you may have misinterpreted the system because
> of the multiple elimination rule
> 
> The result after round 1 was
> 
> 45.24%) McAleese
> 29.30%) Banotti
> 13.82%) Scallon
> 6.96%) Roche 
> 4.69%) Nally 
> 
> The rule is that you can eliminate a group of the lowest 
> candidates as long as the sum of their vote is lower than 
> the vote of the next highest candidate.  The theory is that 
> that even if they all transferred their votes to one of the group, 
> that candidate would still be eliminated anyway as they 
> wouldn't have less votes than any candidate outside the 
> group.  This is somewhat equivalent to declaring a candidate 
> with the majority of the remaining votes a winner because 
> even if all the other candidates transfer their votes to a 
> single one of them, they will still have less votes than the 
> one with the majority.
> 
> Nally + Roche + Scallon = 25.47%
> 
> This is lower than Banotti's total (29.30%), so all 3 can be 
> eliminated in one go.
> 
> Thus round 2 only contains McAleese and Banotti.
> 
> In effect, round 2,3 and 4 are skipped as it no matter how
> the transfers go, Nally, Roche and Scallon would be 
> eliminated in that order.  
> 
> In fact, sometimes the order isn't known for sure, just that they 
> would all be eliminated for sure.
> 
> For example, if the votes were
> 
> N: 6
> R: 7
> S: 12
> B: 30
> 
> Then it could go one of two ways
> 
> If Nally transfers mostly to Roche, then after he is 
> eliminated, it becomes
> 
> R: 13
> S: 12
> B: 30
> 
> The elimination order is N->S->R
> 
> OTOH, if the votes are split more evenly, it would be something like
> 
> R: 10
> S: 15
> B: 30
> 
> The elimination order is N->R->S
> 
> In both cases, N, R and S are eliminated before Banotti.
> 
> Thus it might look like contingent vote but is actually 
> PR-STV (single seat).
> 
> 
> 
> Raphfrk

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