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Tag: single transferable vote

Popular books on voting reform

Note: Updated Feb. 28, 2020.

My RCV bibliography lists books and articles that are research-heavy, but I wanted to keep track of other important texts as well. Some are from the movement itself, and others debate its proposals.

This is a non-exhaustive and evolving list. Entries are organized by period: recent books, slightly older (1990s-early 2000s), old (1890s-1940s), and very old (1860s-80s). Readers interested in very deep PR history can visit this page at the PR Foundation website.

It is an interesting list to compile. The farther back one goes in time, the harder it is to distinguish social science from advocacy.

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Black represention in Cincinnati under the single transferable vote

A reader asks, “When was first African-American candidate elected? Was representation continuous from then, until repeal? When was the first time there were two?” The answers are 1931, no, and November 1949.

Some context: Cincinnati used the single transferable vote in 31 elections, from 1925 to 1955. This was in tandem with an otherwise standard council-manager charter: nonpartisan elections, nine-seat assembly, responsible executive, and so forth.

Here is a list of Black candidates who ran, their parties, and whether they won. The list is based on having researched the identities of every declared candidate. “Charter” means an endorsee of this group, which used to be a coalition of Progressive Republicans and the mainline Democratic Party. A candidate’s name is underlined if they won a seat.

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Scholarly work on RCV

I have started a bibliography of recent, empirical, and peer-reviewed work on ranked-choice voting.

My hope is that the page will be useful to policymakers and researchers. So far, it covers burdens on voters, burdens on election officials, effects on candidates and parties, causes of adoption/repeal, and book-length historical accounts.

Please reach out if you have something to add.

Example STV ballots

What did ballots look like in American single transferable vote elections? I can’t find examples, so I am licensing these photos for public use. The ballots are from Worcester, Massachusetts, which held six PR elections, 1949-59. Please tell me if you know of PR ballots from other cities.

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Painful vote counts under RCV?

One possible bug in ranked-choice voting is the duration of a vote count. This is especially true in the proportional representation (PR) form, since ballots may move around a lot more than in “instant-runoff voting.” Many used to suggest that painful vote counts were a cause of PR’s repeal. This claim resurfaced yesterday in a private exchange about Al Southwick’s piece on PR in Worcester, Mass. Southwick writes:

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