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The STV Clinic

• Mark Devenport
• 6 Mar 07, 12:32 PM

I have decided to elevate a comment I got on a previous entry to a full post as I know there's still a lot of confusion out there about the STV system. Maurice Martin asked "No one can explain to me how quota surpluses are distributed. Is it only the votes after the quota is reached that are transferred or do all the second preferences count? Our district has 16 candidates for 6 seats, how far down the list must I vote?"

Your last point is the easiest to answer - vote for as many or as few candidates as you like. It doesn't make any difference that there are only 6 MLAs per constituency. Because you cannot guarantee the order in which candidates might be elected or eliminated it's quite possible that a 7th, 8th or later preference could still have some bearing on the election.

The distribution of surpluses is more technical. The election officials do not simply take the stack of votes left over after a candidate is elected and count the second preference on those votes. If they did that it would discriminate against people whose second preferences would then be ignored.

Instead the officials count all the second preferences for victorious candidates and then divide them so they are portioned out in proportion to the surplus the winning candidate has accrued. They are then allocated at a reduced value. That's why you sometime get fractions of votes being transferred - they represent the outcome of the sum the officials do.

On the topic of STV here is, as they say on Blue Peter, one I prepared earlier. It's a film I recorded at a mock election in St Gemma's School in North Belfast around the European election in June 2004. With the help of the former returning officer, Joe Connolly, it was an attempt to explain STV.....

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