Choice Voting

Choice Voting, also known as Ranked Choice Voting or the Single Transferable Vote, is an election system used to elect several candidates at a time, as in a City Council or multi-member legislative district. In single-winner elections, the system often goes by the name Instant Runoff Voting. Choice Voting ensures that the election outcome is an accurate cross-section of voters' preferences.

Choice voting works on the principle that all voters have a right to be represented by someone they support. To vote, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If your top choice loses or wins with votes to spare, your vote goes to your next choice. After a choice voting election, each elected candidate represents a distinct equal-sized group of like-minded voters.

In November 2006, Davis voters spoke out for better democracy, but the passage of Measure L didn't get us all the way there.

While Measure L demonstrated that Davis voters want Choice Voting, government red tape has blocked the will of the people. Voters in San Francisco and many other "charter cities" are already enjoying the benefits of Choice Voting, but Davis voters have been left in the lurch.

Now, a California State Bill could finally give Davis voters the right to choose. Assembly Bill 1121, would allow a small number of "general law" cities the option to use choice voting for local elections. The bill has already passed in the California Assembly, and now it needs our support to make it through the Senate.

Please take a minute to Contact Senator Wolk now The most effective way to reach your Representative is with a phone call. Act now!

Call:(916) 651-4005 Sample Message: "Hi, my name is <your name> and I'm from <where you are from> I'm calling to urge Senator Wolk to champion Assembly Bill 1121, which would give local voters the right to choose how our elections are run. Davis voters have already spoken out for Choice Voting—its time to give the people the right to choose. We're counting on Senator Wolk. Thank you!"

See the davischoicevoting.org blog for more.

Voters rank the candidates in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, and so on. You can rank as many or as few as you want. Ranking more choices cannot hurt your higher-ranked choices.

Say we're electing 4 candidates. Choice voting elections are tallied in the following way. First, the winning threshold is calculated. Take the total number of voters and divide by the number of seats plus one. In our case, the winning threshold is 20% of the vote.

Then the top choices are counted. If no candidate reaches the winning threshold, the last place candidate is eliminated. If your ballot went to that candidate, your vote transfers to your next choice. All the ballots are then recounted.

If some candidate does reach the threshold, that candidate is elected and their excess vote is transferred. For example, if the threshold is 1000 and the candidate received 1500 votes, one third of their vote is excess. If you voted for that candidate, one third of your vote transfers to your next choice listed.

This process continues round by round until all seats are filled. In the end, each elected candidate represents a distinct group of (in our example) 20% of the voters. Go to the ASUCD Elections web site to see an actual round-by-round tally of an ASUCD election.

Choice Voting is being used by or explored in several countries, including Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, and some cities and organizations in the United States. Locally, UC Davis students use Choice Voting to elect the ASUCD Senate (and ASUCD President).

In the November 2006 Election Davis passed Measure L, which advised the city to consider using Choice Voting for its local elections. History of Choice Voting in Davis will provide a detailed look at the process of getting Choice Voting passed by the City of Davis.

Campaign flier. Endorsement list.

Choice voting was on the November 2006 Davis city ballot as measure L. For more information about the campaign, check out DavisChoiceVoting.org. The city of Davis is interested in using Choice Voting for City Council elections. The Davis City Council formed a 9-member Davis Governance Task Force to "study issues related to governance" for six months. The Task Force paid close attention to Choice Voting and agreed (with only one abstention) to recommend that the city of Davis adopt Choice Voting. A group of concerned citizens calling themselves Davis Citizens for Representation was formed to educate the city about the benefits of using Choice Voting.

There are slight variations in how choice voting elections can be tallied, and each has its advantages. Mathematicians have proven that there is no "perfect" voting system. But that does not stop some people from trying to find the perfect implementation of choice voting.

For example, some argue that ASUCD's method of Choice Voting allows effective tactical voting¹. Here's an example from ASUCD's Winter 2005 election:

Say you like Rob Roy and Kristen Birdsall in that order. If you had voted Rob Roy(1), Kristen Birdsall(2), your vote would have counted approximately 3/4 for Rob Roy and 1/4 for Kristen Birdsall. However, if in advance you thought Rob Roy would win and Mohammad had no chance of winning, you could gamble and vote Mohammad(1), Rob Roy(2), Kristen Birdsall(3). If the vote turned out as you predicted, your vote would go 100% to Kristen Birdsall. In case Rob Roy did need your vote after all, he would still receive it. The risk is that if Mohammad won, you'd be stuck with that.

More advanced implementations of Choice Voting, such as Meek's Method, reduce this possibility. Even though the possibility for strategic voting will always exist in some form for Choice Voting, it is much more difficult to exploit than in plurality or block voting. For example, in plurality voting, strategic voting is easy. Many people vote for the candidate that has the best chance of winning (e.g. Nader/Gore), even if they dislike the candidate more.

One interesting feature of Choice Voting is that it doesn't consider the weight of preferences, merely their ranked order. For instance, it doesn't matter how much a voter prefers Rob to Kristen, as all that matters is that Rob is ranked ahead of Kristen on the ballot. There are other voting systems that attempt to use the weight of preferences to determine the result (eg Borda Counts, Cumulative Voting, and Range Voting), however these systems are open to a fairly obvious form of tactical voting: exaggerating the difference, such as by ranking your second preference last.

However, most Choice Voting supporters would consider the fact the Choice Voting doesn't use a "weights" system to be a good thing. When the voter is allowed to assign weights to candidates they naturally respond by voting tactically. "Cumulative voting" is an admittedly tactical voting system. So, what's the problem? The problem is that results from a Cumulative voting election will not be as proportional as those from a Choice Voting election. The fact Choice Voting works in a round-by-round fashion and does not allow voters to easily tactically vote means that the final result more accurately represents the preference of the entire body of voters as a whole.

• Flash animation showing how it works
  

• Wikipedia article on STV
  

• Wikipedia article on IRV
  

• Davis Citizens for Representation (DavisChoiceVoting.org) — Davis-based Choice voting advocacy group
  

• Davis Governance Task Force

AB1294 was vetoed on October 12th, 2007 by Governor Schwarzenegger. He released this press release stating why. AB1294 would have allowed all California cities and counties to use choice voting regardless of their charter status.

This bill could have been a critical step toward adoption of choice voting in Davis. Currently state law forbids general law cities, like Davis, from choosing their electoral system. As the law currently stands, Davis would have to become a charter city before it could start using choice voting. AB1294 would have removed that roadblock.

Davis Citizen's for Representation has made a sample letter to Governor Schwarzenegger that was available to people who wanted to contact the governor.

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I'm fairly certain that STV is not being used or considered anywhere in Canada currently (though that may be wrong); it was the subject of a referendum in British Columbia in 2005 which failed to achieve the 60% threshold needed to pass it. Most Canadian advocates of proportional representation tend to support a different variant, in which there are candidate lists at a national level as well as local MPs elected either by something like STV or just classic First Past the Post. This is closer to the German model, and I believe that variations like this are what was considered in the PEI referendum, and are also what is being considered in Québec. —DanielBrown