Legal Definitions - transferable vote

A transferable vote refers to a voting system, most commonly known as the Single Transferable Vote (STV), where voters rank candidates in order of preference rather than simply choosing one. In this system, if a voter's first-choice candidate is either eliminated (because they have too few votes) or has already secured a seat (because they have too many votes), their vote is then "transferred" to their next preferred candidate. This process continues through multiple rounds of counting until all available seats are filled, aiming to ensure that almost every vote contributes to electing a candidate and to achieve proportional representation.

Here are some examples to illustrate how a transferable vote works:

• Local Council Election: Imagine a city is electing three representatives to its local council from a pool of five candidates. Voters are asked to rank the candidates from 1 (most preferred) to 5 (least preferred). If a voter's top-ranked candidate receives very few votes and is eliminated early in the counting process, that voter's ballot isn't wasted. Instead, their vote is transferred to their second-ranked candidate. Similarly, if a candidate receives an overwhelming number of first-preference votes, exceeding the number needed to secure a seat, the surplus portion of those votes can be transferred to the voters' next preferred candidates, ensuring that more voters have their preferences contribute to the final outcome.

• Professional Organization Board Election: A national association of architects needs to elect five members to its governing board. There are ten candidates, and members are instructed to rank their top five choices. Suppose Candidate A is extremely popular and quickly reaches the quota of votes needed to be elected. Any additional votes for Candidate A beyond that quota are not discarded. Instead, these "surplus" votes are transferred to the next preferred candidate on those ballots. This ensures that the strong support for Candidate A also helps elect other candidates who are preferred by Candidate A's supporters, making the election more representative of the members' collective will.

• University Student Union Election: Students at a university are electing a President, Vice-President, and Treasurer for their student union. They are given a ballot to rank all candidates for each position. For the Treasurer position, if the candidate ranked first on a particular ballot receives the fewest votes overall and is eliminated, that ballot is not invalidated. The vote is then transferred to the candidate ranked second on that same ballot. This process continues through multiple rounds of counting, reallocating votes from eliminated candidates until one candidate achieves the necessary quota or is the last remaining candidate, ensuring that even votes for less popular candidates can still influence the final result by supporting a voter's subsequent preferences.