The links below provide information about the use of the single transferable vote and other alternative voting systems around the world. Please send suggestions for additional content and information about broken links to webmaster @ openstv.org.
Australia uses the single transferable vote for six types of elections.
Ireland uses the single transferable vote (STV) for four types of elections.
The Dáil Éireann is the lower house of Ireland's parliament, and has constituencies of three to five seats. The STV rules transfer whole votes, and when transferring surplus votes, subsequent choices on the ballots to be transferred are examined to transfer the votes as fairly as possible. These rules have some randomness to them and changing the order of the ballots could change the outcome, but the randomness is much less than other whole-vote methods, such as Cambridge STV rules.
The Senate is the upper house of parliament, and uses the Gregory method, similar to Northern Ireland, and Malta.
Malta has used the single transferable vote (STV) since 1921 to elect the members of its house of representatives. For detailed information concerning the use of STV in Malta, please see the website Malta Elections.
Malta uses the Gregory method of STV, which is similar to the method used in N. Ireland and the ERS97 Rules, but has some unique aspects to it. The Malta constitution specifies certain requirements based on the number votes each party received at the first stage of the count to ensure that the party receiving the greatest number of first-place votes controls the house. More details may be found here
Northern Ireland uses the single transferable vote for three different types of elections.
Northern Ireland Assembly elections have six-seat constituencies.
Northern Ireland local elections have five-to-seven seat constituencies. The counting rules do not appear to be available online, but a scanned version may be found here.
Northern Ireland has a single three-seat constituency for European elections.
Scotland has used the single transferable vote since 2007 to elect the councillors to its local authorities. Scotland was the first government to use the weighted inclusive Gregory method counting rules. The statute is online.
The cities listed below have held at least one IRV election and still use IRV for elections. Not included are cities that previously held an IRV election but later repealed IRV, or cities that have approved IRV for use but have not yet held an IRV election.
Burlington, Vermont has used instant runoff voting to elect its mayor since 2006. So far there have been two IRV elections, taking place in 2006 and 2009. Burlington has detailed information about its elections here.
Section 5(b) of Title II of the city charter provides guidelines for implementing IRV, and allows the city council to pass regulations consistent with the guidelines, but I have not found any such regulations online.
The ballots and official results are also available online:
One unusual aspect of Burlington's implementation of IRV is the way that it treats overvotes (when more than one candidate is given the same ranking). With most implementations of IRV (and STV), overvotes are not used in the count and effectively removed from the ballots before the start of the count. Burlington, however, will look at the overvotes during the count.
For example, consider a ballot where candidates A and B are both ranked second. Burlington considers the overvote at the time it is being processed. If both A and B are still in the running at this time, then it is treated as an overvote and ignored. If, however, one of A and B has already been eliminated at this time, then it is not treated as an overvote because there is only one candidate in the running.
The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts has used STV to elect its city council and school committee since 1941. The statute providing the counting rules is Chapter 54A of Massachusetts General Laws. Although this law was repealed by the legislature, any city implementing STV at that time was allowed to continue to do so. For a wealth of information on the Cambridge elections, see Robert Winter's website.
In general terms, the following is the procedure for counting the votes:
Note that § 16(b) allows Cambridge to use any method for transferring surplus votes that was in use in 1938, and Cambridge has chosen to use the Cincinnati method.
The City of Cambridge describes the Cincinnati method as follows:
The ballots of the candidate who has a surplus are numbered sequentially in the order in which they have been counted (that is, in the sequence dictated by the random draw of precincts) and then every nth ballot is drawn and transferred to a continuing candidate until the original candidate is credited with ballots equaling no more than quota. n is nearest whole number computed by the formula
n = Candidate's Total Ballots
Surplus Ballots.
A ballot selected by this method that does not show a preference for a continuing candidate is skipped and remains with the original candidate. If not enough ballots are removed when ballots n, 2n, 3n, .... have been transferred, the sequence starts again with n+1, 2n+1, 3n+1, ....
Minneapolis held its first elections using the single transferable vote and instant runoff voting in 2009. Minneapolis describes both such elections as ranked-choice voting. The single transferable vote rules are the weighted inclusive Gregory method, which are similar to the rules used in Scotland.
The offices of mayor, city council members, and park board district commissioners are elected using instant runoff voting, and the offices of board of estimate and taxation at-large (two seats) and park board at-large (three seats) are elected using the single transferable vote.
The City of Minneapolis has a web page for ranked choice voting and the statute is online.
San Francisco has used instant runoff voting (under the name ranked-choice voting) since 2004 (statute). Elections using instant runoff voting include board of supervisors, assessor recorder, treasurer, city attorney, mayor, district attorney, and sheriff. San Francisco has put the ballots online:
Takoma Park, Maryland has used instant runoff voting to elect its mayor and city council since 2007. The first election was a special election to fill a vacancy in the city council in the spring of 2007, and afterward has been used for regularly scheduled elections. Article 6, section 606 of the city charter sets forth the requirements for instant runoff voting.