Guidelines to Assist National Minority Participation in the Electoral Process Page: 21 preferential voting are a proportional system, the Single Transferable Vote (STV), and a majority system, the Alternative Vote (AV). Under both systems, electors rank the candidates in order of choice, marking a “1” for their favourite candidate, “2” for their second choice, “3” for their third choice, and so on. In essence, voters are saying to the election officer “if my first choice does not win, use my second vote”. STV elections generally utilise small multi-member electoral districts. After the total number of firstpreference votes are tallied “a quota” of votes is established, which a candidate must achieve to be elected. Any candidate that has more first preferences than the quota, is immediately elected. If no one has achieved the quota, the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is eliminated and their second preferences are redistributed amongst remaining candidates and the surplus votes of elected candidates are redistributed according to the second preferences on the ballot papers until all seats for the constituency are filled. This system is well established in Ireland and Malta, and has also been used for elections in Northern Ireland and Estonia. STV was successfully used at the 1998 Northern Ireland “Good Friday” agreement elections. It appears to have promoted a degree of moderation and accommodation in the political process. Because of its preferential ballot, STV enabled voters to pass their lower-order preferences on to “proagreement” parties, and also encouraged some of the sectarian parties to soften their rhetoric and policies in the hope of gaining such preference votes. It also produced fairly proportional outcomes. In terms of accommodating minority interests, it has much to recommend it, particularly in deeply divided societies. On the other hand, political parties tend to dislike STV as it takes the decision over candidates away from them. In addition, because of the complicated and technical nature of the vote counting process, there may be perceptions of manipulation or fraud. It should also be noted that the system appeared to work well in Estonia in 1992 when there were no political parties but fared less well in 1995 when there were political parties. The other major preferential system, AV, is a majority system that usually takes place in singlemember districts, requiring winning candidates to gain an absolute majority of the vote to be elected, either directly or indirectly by the distribution of alternative votes. For example, if no candidate has over 50% of the direct votes, the lower order alternative votes are transferred until a majority winner emerges. Under some circumstances, this feature presents candidates with a strong incentive to try and attract the second preferences from voters from other groups (assuming that the voters first preference would usually be a candidate from their own group). This is because winners need to gain an absolute majority of the vote under AV rules. Candidates who successfully “pool” their own first preferences and the second preferences of others will be more successful than those who fail to attract any secondorder support. This system is used in Australia and for presidential elections in the Republic of Ireland. It is particularly appropriate for the election of single-person offices such as presidencies. A related system, the supplementary vote, has recently been used for mayoral elections in London. The advantages of preferential vote systems are as follows: - they can produce incentives to accommodate minority interests; - they give voters a greater degree of choice between candidates – they are not limited to a single choice; - candidates who are elected will sometimes be dependent on the votes of groups other than their own;