From Pirate Party UK Wiki

Contents 1 Introduction 2 STV 2.1 Threshold 2.2 Vote Transfer 2.3 Minority Candidates 2.4 RON 2.4.1 Single-Seat and RON 2.4.2 Multi-Seat and RON 2.4.2.1 RON(*) 2.4.2.2 RON 2.4.3 RON and placement 2.4.4 Re-Opening Nominations

Introduction

The Board of Governors and the NEC are jointly required by clause 10.16 of the constitution to ensure election and vote procedures are followed. The constitution requires that all elections use the ERS97 STV voting rules. These rules outline how to define thresholds and the point at which surplus votes transfer between candidates. This is quite complicated, and the Party currently use the OpenSTV v1.6 software to manage this process.

General information about how STV elections work is outlined below.

STV

Allows voters to order candidates by preference. Should a voter's first preference be eliminated or receive excess votes, their second preference can be counted, etc.

Threshold

The threshold is the number of votes a candidate needs to receive in order to 'win' a seat. The threshold is a function of the number of votes cast and the number of seats won.

e.g. threshold = X + (votes cast / seats to be won +1)

(X varies by circumstance and exact STV method used, may be 0)

Vote Transfer

After a candidate receives a number of votes to reach the threshold, additional votes are then transferred.

Minority Candidates

One of the benefits of multi-seat STV is that the vote-transfer mechanism allows 'minority view' candidates to be elected. The only criteria that a candidate needs to fulfil to win a seat is to receive a number of votes that allows them to reach the winning threshold. It doesn't what order candidates reach the threshold, they are all equally valid winners.

RON

Single-Seat and RON

When there is one seat up for grabs, RON included as a candidate is quite simple. There can be only one winner. If this is RON, no-one wins and nominations should be re-opened.

Multi-Seat and RON

This is more complicated. This is an STV election where instead of there being one winner, there are instead a pre-determined number of seats up for grabs.

As the number of votes required for candidates to reach a threshold to win a seat is dependant on the number of votes cast, it can be difficult for voters to express dissatisfaction with the candidates by simply not voting. The inclusion of RON (re-open nominations) as a 'candidate' provides voters with a mechanism to draw the line between those candidates they deem worthy, and those they deem unsuitable.

Assuming there are voters who perceive none of the candidates to be suitable they might normally not cast any votes, which would decrease the threshold. Therefore where RON is included, a vote for RON can increase the number of votes cast, thus increasing the threshold. This opens up the possibility of depriving candidates with insufficient votes from winning a seat.

There are two competing thoughts on how RON should be used within multi-seat STV votes. These use RON as either a single candidate, or multiple candidates.

RON(*)

This method uses a number of RONs as per the number of seats to be won. So for four winnable seats an election would include RON(1), RON(2), RON(3), and RON(4). This allows for a voter to vote so as to ensure that any RON votes over the threshold gets transferred to another RON rather than being discarded (we assume such a voter would not place a real candidate in a preference slot below RON). This does however create complexity as there is nothing preventing a voter casting their 1st to 4th preferences for RON(4), RON(3), RON(2), and RON(1) respectively and causing a result inherently different from if they had voted their 1st to 4th preferences for RON(1), RON(2), RON(3), and RON(4) respectively.

RON

This method uses just 1 RON candidate. This forgoes the complexity of the RON(*) method, which means that it is easier to deal with, while potentially fractionally reducing the power of the RON candidate as surplus votes aren't counted (as we assume such a voter would not place a real candidate in a preference slot below RON).

The degree to which these methods differ is probably far more theoretical than practical.

RON and placement

It is possible however that there is a large enough minority of voters putting their support behind candidates that allows those candidates to reach the required vote threshold even if they place behind RON (i.e. they reach the threshold in a counting round after RON has).

While this could indicate a sizeable number of people preferring RON over those 'lower placed' candidates, it does not prevent those candidates winning seats because it does not negate the fact that those candidates have reached the threshold. Remember that the order of placing doesn't actually matter, all winners win equally.

Re-Opening Nominations

It is important to note that multi-seat STV elections can, with or without the inclusion of RON, result in some seats being unfilled (e.g. if all voters cast the same 1st preference with no other preferences it would be impossible for more than 1 candidate to reach the requires threshold). So with or without RON it is possible that some seats remain unfilled.

While RON is commonly used as an indicator that there is a desire for nominations to be re-opened seats that remain unfilled due to other causes should also trigger the re-opening of nominations.