► All About Voting
About Voting!
Students may be confused about the system used by the Students’ Association for voting. The information below will help you to explain it to them.
Transferable Voting.
The simplest form of voting by secret ballot is ‘first past the post’. This is the system used in local and general elections and will be familiar to most people. The voter puts a cross next to the name of the candidate that they wish to vote for. The candidate with the highest number of votes is the winner!
The Transferable Vote system allows each voter the fullest freedom of choice between candidates and the maximum use of their vote by allowing the voter to make preferences for candidates by placing a 1, 2, 3 etc next to the candidate of their choice in descending order of preference.
Alternative Transferable Vote (ATV).
Alternative transferable vote is used to elect single positions, in our case, the sabbatical officers. The first choice votes are counted and a quota is established. This is the minimum number of votes that a candidate needs to achieve to become elected and for single posts it is 50% plus one of the total valid votes. If no candidate achieves the quota on the first count, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their votes are allocated to the next expressed preference. This process is continued until someone achieves the quota and is elected.
Single Transferable Vote (STV)
Single transferable vote is used to elect multiple positions, in our case, Ordinary Trustees and NUS Delegations. In terms of voting, the ballot paper would look like the one in the alternative transferable vote, and the voter is still allowed to express their choice in order of preference. The important difference is in the way that the vote is counted. This time, to work out the quota, we divide the total number of valid votes by the number of positions+1 and then add one to the total. This time, if a candidate has achieved the quota on the first preference, they are elected. The number of votes that the quota has been exceeded by (the surplus) is then distributed to the other candidates. This bit is quite complicated and so I won’t go into the detail of it here. If, on any of the counts, no-one exceeds the quota, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their 2nd preference papers are re-distributed. This process is continued until all the positions have been elected.
