How the Voting Works

Anyone who is a member of the JCR body can vote on Friday 5th March. You name will be crossed off a list, to check you are a member of the JCR and have not already voted.

Basic Summary

Downing JCR uses a voting system called single transferrable voting (STV). On the ballot paper, voters write 1 next to their preferred candidate, 2 next to their second choice and so on until they are indifferent. If their first choice candidate doesn't get an overall majority, then their second choice votes are used, and so on.

Downing JCR also has a provision for RON, which stands for Re-Open Nominations. You should mark this box on the ballot paper if you do not want any of the candidates, and if "RON" is elected, then a new election has to be held for that position.

Counting Details for STV

Counting takes place by the following procedure for each position to be elected:

1. Spoilt ballot papers, or ballot papers where a voter did not specify anything (for that position) are put to one side.
2. First preference votes are counted, and ballot papers seperated into piles for each candidate
3. If any candidate has over half of the first preference votes, they are elected
4. If no-one has a majority of over 50%, then the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated. Their pile of votes is distributed to the other candidates according to the voters' next preferences on those ballot papers only. If no further preferences are stated on that ballot paper it is discarded for this position
5. The piles are recounted. Any candidate has over half of the remaining votes is elected. If not, the candidate with the next fewest votes at this stage is eliminated, and the process repeats.
6. If there is a tie to eliminate a candidate or decide a winner, a toss of a coin is used to break the tie.
7. If RON is the winner, then nominations will need to be re-opened for a new election.

Example

Imagine one position has three candidates standing who are named Red, Blue and Yellow. The votes are counted and seperated into piles, and first preference votes were as follows:

Red      45
Blue     30
Yellow   5
RON     20
(Suppose there were also 5 spoilt ballot papers, or ballot papers where people didn't write anything for this position - we put these aside and don't include them in totals).

The total number of votes cast is, conveniently, 100

Red has 45 out of 100 votes, which is not over 50%. So redistribution occurs.

The candidate with the least first preference votes at this stage (Yellow) is eliminated. We take these ballot papers, and look for the voters second preference votes, and allocate them to the piles. (What this means is that for any voter, their second or later preference votes can never count against their favourite candidate - their ballot paper is only re-allocated when their favourite candidate is eliminated).

Suppose that of the 5 people that voted for Yellow, four stated their second preference as Red, and one put RON as second preference (i.e. this voter says "If Yellow's not going to be elected, I think their should be a new election")

The totals now look like this:

Red      49
Blue     30
RON    21

Red is frustratingly just 1 vote short of the majority required to be elected at this stage. So RON is eliminated, and any second preference votes re-allocated. Where a candidate is eliminated who has already been assigned second preference votes, we look at the third preference votes of these ballot papers. So in this example, we look at the one ballot paper we transferred across from yellow to RON, and see if the voter specified a third choice.

With two candidates left, one must have a majority and so is elected. In the event of a tie at this stage, or to pick between two equal candidates for elimination, then a coin is tossed.

For Sub-committees, the process is the same as above. However, in order to encourage first-year participation on the sub-committees, the constitution states  if any process of elimination for the sub-committee would involve removing the only remaining first year candidate, then that candidate is automatically elected.