Largest Remainder is the occasional newsletter of the NSW Branch of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia.

In this issue:

• Notice of meeting
• Editorial
• STV Electorates Returning an Even Number of Members – Is it all bad?
• Should Local Government Avoid Returning an Odd Number of Councillors?

You can download the entire newsletter here and an excerpt of two articles appears below.

STV Electorates Returning an Even Number of Members – Is it all bad?

This article will examine the “truth” that Single Transferable Vote (STV) electorates must return an odd number of members. The rationale for this “truth” can be seen in this extract from the PRSA website.

In this issue (also available here):

• Campaign Direction 2012 survey gets great response - and the winner is . . .
• NDP leadership candidates make firm commitment on fair voting reform; three go farther
• Robocall scandal and allegations of electoral fraud spark demands for voting system reform
• Nominations close for FVC National Council elections
• Fair Vote Canada AGM to be held in Toronto May 26

Campaign Direction 2012 survey gets great response - and the winner is . . .

Over the past six months, I've been working on a new version of OpaVote with many new features and improvements. Today, the new version of OpaVote is live!

The key new features of this version are:

• Elections can now have up to 1 million voters (previous limit was 40,000).
• Elections and polls can now count votes using OpenSTV and present the results using colorful bar charts.
• Multiple contests (e.g., President, Vice-President, and Secretary) per election.
• Can use traditional voting (e.g., check a box) instead of ranked voting. This provides a better user interface when selecting one of two options.

To see the FairVote Reformer Newsletter with links and pictures, click here.

Welcome to 2012! It’s a big election year, and there’s no shortage of elections to track and reform ideas to explain. We’re the nation’s go-to resource when it comes to big thinking about election reform – certainly there’s rarely been a better time for out-of-the-box approaches to stand up for American votes and our democracy.

FairVote 20th Anniversary - and a Salute to John B. Anderson

This year marks FairVote’s 20th anniversary of our founding meeting in Cincinnati (OH) in June 1992. Keep an eye out for special events and campaigns!

In this issue (available here):

• Liberal convention decides to promote electoral reform, endorses wrong voting system
• FVC challenges NDP leadership candidates to be champions for fair voting
• Fair Vote Canada to hold National Council elections on April 26
• Fair Vote Canada AGM to be held in Toronto May 26

Liberal convention decides to promote electoral reform, endorses wrong voting system