Single transferable vote

Divya VK, Akhila NP, Amulya Arun

Guide: Professor Chandrakala G Raju

Abstract STV aims to improve voter happiness by minimising the issues of

negative campaigning and strategic voting.

Under STV, a process of ranked voting is followed where a single vote is given to the most preferred candidate.

The vote is transferred to other candidates according to the voter's stated preferences, in proportion to any surplus or discarded votes.

The project aims to develop an application that implements STV which consist of the functionalities of administrator and voter.

The tools involved in implementing this project involve HTML,CSS, JavaScript and Jquery.

STV is considered to be complicated and time consuming, but it is currently one of best voting practices available worldwide.

Literature Survey

According to 'New System for the Election of Council: The single transferable vote', published in IEEE, brings out several disadvantages of current system :- “The principal defect of non transferable vote system lies in the equity of votes. However, the most serious defect is vote wastage and the effect which knowledge of this vote wastage. All these anomalies can be corrected by using STV. “

According to 'Manipulability of Single Transferable Vote', Toby Walsh, published in IEEE, Sydney, Australia- “It also appears to be one of the harder rules to manipulate since it involves multiple rounds and since, unlike many other rules, it is NP-hard for a single agent to manipulate without weights on the votes or uncertainty about how the other agents have voted.”

Algorithm 123 — SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE BY MEEK’S METHOD I. D. HILL , B. A. WICHMANN and D. R. WOODALL 1987, Received 17 October 1985, in final form 13 May 1986 –“Most of the methods are designed to be practicable when counting is by hand, and this necessarily enforces simplicity even at the expense of not always getting the best possible answer.”

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhmfs/documents/2010_11/20110216_reso_votingmethodscounting.pdf - “Droop quota is preferred because it is the only whole-number threshold for which (a) a majority of the voters can be guaranteed to elect a majority of the seats when there is an odd number of seats, and (b) we cannot elect more candidates than there are seats.”

Literature Survey According to Fair Votes In Practice, published in Royal Statistical

Society’s Journal, STV must includes following advantages :

a) Votes are cast for individuals not party lists

b) There are no safe seats, so every vote matters

c) The great majority of voters end up with at least one MP they voted for

d)Overall result is broadly proportional, at least among parties attracting support or more minority parties and independents can get elected if they can attract a similar level of support locally but it is more difficult for extremist parties, because they tend not to be anyone's second

According to ‘Confused or competent? How voters use the STV ballot paper’, published in electoral journal in University of Starthclyde , focuses on how voters respond to the system. The STV is considered extolled, but it is also criticised to be confusing. Ultimately, it depends on how voters chose to use it. STV was used for the first time in Scottish local elections in 2007, therefore, survey data was used to examine the incidence of various indicators of apparent failure by Scottish voters to exploit STV.

Analysis Limitations of other voting systems:

1. 1.Candidates need a majority of votes to be elected.

2. 2. The votes of all but the winning candidate are wasted.

3. 3.Voters have limited choice.

The proposed STV system:

1. 1.Candidates don’t need a majority of votes to be elected, all they require is a known ‘quota’.

2. 2.In STV system very few votes are wasted as they can be transferred.

3. 3.The voter marks their ballot card in order of preference which gives maximum choice to the voter.

4. 4.It is arguably a much more representative and inclusive voting system as it gives voters more choice than any other system. This choice puts more power in the hands of voters, rather than the political parties.

5. 5.But STV is hardly used because of the time and complexity involved in calculation.

6. 6.We aim at making this system more popular by simplifying it for users by devising an efficient algorithm.

High Level Design- ER Diagram

Admin

Homepage

Login

Username, Password

Error

Authenticate Admin Start Election,

Add\Edit\Delete Voters and Candidates\View Results

Logout

Admin

Low Level Design- Data Flow Diagram

Voter

Homepage

Register Number, Password

Login

Regenerate Password/Voting completed

Success

Success Rate Candidate

s Submit

Logout

Voter

Algorithm Position 1 calculation:

Algorithm

(No of surplus votes/no of transferable votes) * no of second preference of given candidate

Redistribution:

TestingTS_ID TEST

OBJECTIVEPRECONDITION/REQUISITE

STEPS EXPECTED RESULTS ACTUAL RESULTS

TS_1 Verify user interface of STV application

STV application is already open

Verify UI of STV application

1) ‘Single Transferable Voting System’ should be at the top centre of the application form

2) Radio button consisting the choice of admin and voter should be present at the centre of the application form.

3) ‘enter username’ textbox should be present below the radio button.

Successful

TS_2 Test functionality of admin radio button

STV application is already open

Click on admin button

It should display enter username textbox

Successful

TS_3 Test functionality of voter radio button

STV application is open

Click on voter button

It should display enter username textbox

Successful

Conclusion

Thank You