IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v18y1988i01p142-143_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Electoral Distortion under STV Random Sampling Procedures: A Comment

Author

Listed:
  • Fischer, A. J.

Abstract

In a recent Note in this Journal by Gallagher and Unwin, it was stated that the element of randomness due to sampling surplus votes in single transferable vote (STV) elections ‘has long been recognized, but no previous attempt has been made to assess its impact’. This is incorrect. Work done in Australia (and reported in the leading Australian journals in their respective fields) has comprehensively dealt with this problem both in theory and practice. Since STV is practised in national elections in only three countries (Australia, Ireland and Malta, the most populous being Australia) it is surprising that contributors to, and referees of, this Journal should be unaware of such material. It was largely because of the evidence contained in these articles that the Joint Committee on Electoral Reform recommended to the Australian Parliament an amendment to the Electoral Act, to avoid the problems caused by sampling votes, by using the Gregory method of counting them. The Act was amended in this way in 1983.

Suggested Citation

  • Fischer, A. J., 1988. "Electoral Distortion under STV Random Sampling Procedures: A Comment," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 142-143, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:18:y:1988:i:01:p:142-143_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123400005007/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael O'Kelly & John Doyle & Philip J. Boland, 2010. "How many ways can you look at a proportion?: cross‐community vote transfers in Northern Ireland after the Belfast Agreement," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 173(1), pages 215-235, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:18:y:1988:i:01:p:142-143_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.