Talk:Single transferable vote

Undisclosed payments?

Closed Limelike Curves, what leads you to believe that this article was edited for pay? And what cleanup do you think is necessary? Eeidt (talk) 16:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I seconded the request for clarification as well. I have done a cursory reading on the article and nothing jumped out to me as paid editing. Thank you. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:14, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@Eeidt @SunDawn, it's related to this discussion. The allegation is that a FairVote employee has made significant contributions to pages relating to voting methods. Boardwalk.Koi (talk) 12:07, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@Boardwalk.Koi: what was the outcome of that discussion, the archive doesn't go beyond May 8th? This page will become quite important for the upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election and should ideally not have a huge disclaimer at the top of the page ;-) Braveheart (talk) 10:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The user in question was temporarily banned for "impersonating" the CEO of FairVote, pending proof of his identity. The COI discussion did not proceed beyond that point. IMO we should proceed with the assumption that that was the CEO of FairVote, as his contribution history seems biased for, not against, FairVote. --Brilliand (talk) 16:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree whatsoever that this article deserves an undisclosed paid tag (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States#c-Lcdrovers-20240811044800-Thiesen-20240612184000), and the followup comment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_207#c-Closed_Limelike_Curves-20240502204500-JPxG-20240502140600) regarding IRV's status among social choice theorists indicates that the Lcdrovers (talk) 05:02, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Has any vote been motioned to remove this label? TheRevisionary (talk) 20:52, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

as it's been several months without even attempt of proof at the claim, I've gone ahead and removed the tag. it was added without a vote (and clearly also without consensus) so I don't think a vote should be necessary to remove Affinepplan (talk) 12:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

See this conversation, and the related conversations on Talk:Instant-runoff voting and Talk:Ranked-choice voting in the United States. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 16:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Merge from "Counting Single Transferable Votes"

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge as WP:TOOLONG; some support for moving material between pages; no objections to making the pages more concise. Klbrain (talk) 08:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

---

See counting single transferable votes, which probably needs to be merged into here. –Sincerely, A Lime 04:13, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Disagree... this article is already significantly long per WP:SPLIT (Prose size (text only): 71 kB (11968 words) "readable prose size"), so merging more content into this article makes no sense. It probably makes more sense to move some of the counting parts of this article to Counting single transferable votes. —Joeyconnick (talk) 04:20, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Both articles need to be dramatically shortened as well, yes. They're much too verbose. But you could explain all the same material with probably a tenth of the current word count. –Sincerely, A Lime 04:46, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Strongly oppose Viatori (talk) 02:33, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Largest Remainder uses party-lists.

Contrary to what Closed-Limelike said, Largest-Remainder uses party-lists just like the other party-list allocation-rules.

Closed-Limelike announced at the Election-Methods mailing-list, that he is rewriting electoral Wikipedia articles.

Given his many confusions, idiosyncratic name-changes, & mis-statements at EM, that’s a cause for concern.

I suggest that you not let him do so unless he first announces & justifies his changes at this talk page. 2600:6C55:7900:2B8:BD0D:46B:4B79:40A5 (talk) 19:50, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi, and welcome! It's nice to see you here, Michael :)

I've provided a source on the topic of how STV relates to the largest remainders method, which is Gallagher's seminal paper on the topic. Largest remainders is not a party-list method, but rather an apportionment method, i.e. an algorithm for fairly splitting a whole number of some homogenous resource. Its most well-known application is in party lists, but it has other applications and variants as well.

In the same way that SPAV/PAV can be thought of as a nonpartisan variation on the highest averages methods, STV is effectively a nonpartisan form of largest remainders, where the remainders are passed around within each solid coalition until there are exactly as many candidates left as there are seats, at which point the candidates with the largest remainders (most votes below quota) are elected.

Hope this helps! Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 05:42, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

"STV is effectively a nonpartisan form of largest remainders, where the remainders are passed around within each solid coalition until there are exactly as many candidates left as there are seats, at which point the candidates with the largest remainders (most votes below quota) are elected."

but actually

STV is effectively a nonpartisan form of largest remainders, where the remainders are passed around within each solid coalition, if that is how the voters marked their back-up preferences, or passed across party lines if that is how voter marked their ballot, until due to elections and eliminations, there are only as many candidates left as there are remaining open seats, at which point those candidates with the largest remainders (the most votes even if less than quota) are elected.

question remains --if STV is nonpartisan (which it is), then what are the "solid coalitions"? 2604:3D09:8880:11E0:C409:3F3F:8406:41EF (talk) 23:40, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

A solid coalition is a bloc of voters that ranks a set of candidates side-by-side/together. Basically the idea is that people rank parties first, then rank candidates within each party. For example, a left-wing voter might rank:

1. Democrats
   1. Bernie Sanders
   2. Elizabeth Warren
   3. Joe Biden
   4. Joe Manchin
2. Republicans
   1. Mitt Romney
   2. Donald Trump

$\vdots$

This voter is in the solid coalition for the Democrats. But a moderate voter who mixes their ballots:

1. Joe Manchin
2. Mitt Romney
3. Joe Biden
4. Elizabeth Warren

$\vdots$

Isn't a member of a solid coalition for any group, and therefore may not be represented at all (which contributes to center squeeze in STV, although it's not the sole cause). – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:17, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Single-winner version

Hi! I would like to contest the disclaimer at the beginning; I think it is misleading. If you run an STV with a single-winner, it is actually equivalent to the result of a first-past-the-post vote (with the first preferences). @2604:3D09:8880:11E0:C50:9CF3:7780:38AC it's true that instant runoff transfers votes while FPTP does not. But instant runoff only eliminates from the bottom of the list, while STV does from both ends. Moreover, instant runoff has several properties STV doesn't, such as center squeeze. Thank you in advance! Csimma Viktor (talk) 07:44, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

STV with single-winner is instant-runoff voting. Consider the rules of plain STV. Simplified:

1, 2, 3. If a candidate exceeds the quota, elect this candidate. Redistribute surpluses if we still have candidates left to elect.

4. If we haven't elected all the candidates we wanted to, eliminate the first preference loser and distribute their votes to the highest ranking continuing candidate on each ballot.

5. Repeat from 1 until every candidate is elected.

Let's consider what happens if the number of candidates is one. Then as soon as someone is elected, the process is over, and there's no need to distribute surpluses. So the simplified process is:

1, 2, 3. If a candidate exceeds the quota (i.e. a majority of the non-exhausted first preferences), elect this candidate and stop.

4. Otherwise eliminate the Plurality loser and distribute their votes to the highest non-eliminated candidate on each ballot.

5. Repeat from 1 until someone is elected.

That is IRV.

As for center squeeze, STV can also have it if we arrange matters properly. For instance, let the election be for three seats, with five candidates: U_1, U_2, Left, Center, and Right. Every voter ranks U_1 and U_2 first in that order, then the voters rank the remaining candidates in a way that exhibits center squeeze. STV will elect U_1 and U_2, and because the surplus redistribution is uniform, the last candidate will in effect be decided by an IRV election which will thus show a center squeeze failure.

Finally, some sources that refer to IRV as single-winner STV can be found here.