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Seven British
Cities Elect Mayors with IRV on May 2, 2002
Mayors in seven British
cities were elected on May 2 using the supplementary vote, a modified
form of instant runoff voting. The supplementary vote was also used
to elect the mayor of London in May 2000 and will be used in other
cities in the United Kingdom that choose to elect their mayor
directly. The supplementary vote differs
from instant runoff voting (IRV) in two key
aspects:
-
If no candidate wins a majority of first choices,
all but the top two candidate are eliminated simultaneously rather
than incrementally, as in IRV. The ballots cast for the eliminated
candidates are then counted for the second choice on those ballots
if that choice is one of the top two candidates.
The supplementary vote helps
alleviate the problems of plurality voting, but one need only look
to the first round of the 2002 presidential election in France
in April
2002 to see how it full instant runoff voting has important
advantages. Many people would have expected prime minister Lionel
Jospin to be one of the top two candidates, and would have used
their second, "supplemental" vote for him -- but he finished out of
the top two. Thus, millions of the supporters of the eliminated
candidates (who in total made up 64% of the first-round vote)
wouldn't have ranked either of the runoff candidates (President
Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen) as their second choice and thus
had their vote wasted. In addition, the French elections raises
concerns about eliminating the field to two candidates after just one
round of counting. Jospin was undercut by split votes for several
candidates in the center-left, thus allowing Le Pen to make the
runoff with just 17% of the vote. Still, the decision to elect
British mayors through the supplementary vote elections is further
evidence of the decline in support for plurality voting, as used in
most American elections. For more on these elections, see these links
for each British city that elected its mayor directly and this Washington Times
article.
SUPPLEMENTARY VOTE
RESULTS Source: The Guardian, Friday
May 3, 2002
Doncaster
Elected: Martin Winter (Labour)
Electorate:
216,097
Turnout: 58,487 (27.07%)
First count Martin Winter (Lab) 21,494
(36.75%)
Andrew Burden (Cons) 9,000 (15.39%)
Ms Jessie
Credland (Comm Gp) 8,469 (14.48%)
Michael Maye (Ind Maye) 7,502
(12.83%)
Graham Newman (LD) 5,150 (8.81%)
Terry Wilcox (Ind
Wilcox) 4,036 (6.90%)
Shafiq Ahmad Khan (Ind Khan) 2,836 (4.85%)
- Eliminated: Ms Jessie Credland, Michael Maye,
Graham Newman, Terry Wilcox, Shafiq Ahmad Khan
Second Count
-
Distribution of Khan's, Maye's, Credland's, Newman's and Wilcox's
votes
Martin Winter (Lab) 25,707
Andrew Burden (C) 12,707
Hartlepool Elected: Stuart Drummond
(Independent)
Electorate: 67,903 Turnout: 19,544 (28.78%)
First Count Stuart Drummond (ND) 5,696
(29.14%)
Leo Gillen (Lab) 5,438 (27.82%)
Ian Cameron (Ind)
5,174 (26.47%)
Arthur Preece (LD) 1,675 (8.57%)
Stephen
Close (C) 1,561 (7.99%)
- Eliminated: Ian Cameron, Arthur Preece,
Stephen Close
Second Count
-
Distribution of Preece's and Close's and Cameron's votes
Stuart
Drummond (ND) 7,395
Leo Gillen (Lab) 6,792
Lewisham Elected: Steve Bullock
(Labour)
Electorate: 179,835 Turnout:: 44,518 (24.75%) First Count
Steve Bullock (Lab) 20,011
(44.95%)
Derek Stone (C) 8,004 (17.98%)
Alex Feakes (LD)
7,276 (16.34%)
Sinna Mani (Green) 5,517 (12.39%)
Ms
Marie-Louise Irvine (Parents) 3,710 (8.33%)
- Eliminated: Alex Feakes, Sinna Mani, Ms
Marie-Louise Irvine
Second Count
-
Distribution of Feakes's, Mani's and Irvine's votes
Steve
Bullock (Lab) 24,520
Derek Stone (C) 9,855
Middlesbrough Elected: Raymond Mallon
(Independent)
Electorate: 101,570 Turnout: 41,994 (41.34%)
First Count Raymond Mallon (ND) 26,362
(62.78%)
Ms Sylvia Connolly (Lab) 9,653 (22.99%)
Joe Michna
(LD) 3,820 (9.10%)
Ronald Darby (C) 1,510 (3.60%)
Jeffrey
Fowler (Soc All) 352 (0.84%)
Rod Jones (Ind) 297 (0.71%)
Newham
Elected: Sir Robin Wales (Labour)
Electorate:
157,505 Turnout: 40,147 (25.49%)
First Count Sir Robin Wales (Lab) 20,384
(50.77%)
Tawfique Choudhury (Ind) 5,907 (14.71%)
Graham
Postles (C) 4,635 (11.55%)
Alan Craig (CPA) 3,649 (9.09%)
Michael Davidson (BNP) 2,881 (7.18%)
Ms Gabrielle Rolfe (Green) 2,691
(6.70%) North Tyneside Elected: Chris Morgan
Electorate: 143,804;
Turnout: 60,865 (42.32%) First Count Chris Morgan (C) 21,829 (35.86%)
Eddie Darke (Lab) 19,601 (32.20%)
Michael Huscroft (LD)
12,323 (20.25%)
Allan Pond (Ind PF) 4,993 (8.20%)
Michael
Elliott (Soc All) 2,119 (3.48%)
- Eliminated: Michael Huscroft,
Allan Pond, Michael Elliott
Second Count
- Distribution of Huscroft's, Pond's and Elliott's
votes
Chris Morgan (C) 26,083
Eddie Darke (Lab) 24,531
Watford Elected: Ms Dorothy Thornhill
(Liberal Democrats)
Electorate: 61,359 Turnout: 22,170 (36.13%) First Count Ms Dorothy Thornhill (LD) 10,954
(49.41%)
Vince Muspratt (Lab) 4,899 (22.10%)
Garry Ling (C)
4,746 (21.41%)
Stephen Rackett (Green) 851 (3.84%)
Paul
Woodward (Soc All) 390 (1.76%)
Anthony Cooke (FCP) 330 (1.49%)
- Eliminated: Garry Ling, Stephen Rackett, Paul Woodward, Anthony
Cooke Second Count
- Distribution of Ling's,
Cooke's, Woodward's and Rackett's votes
Ms Dorothy Thornhill
(LD) 13,473
Vince Muspratt (Lab) 5,269
Washington Post
England
Votes, but Not Necessarily at Polls
By T.R. Reid
May 3, 2002 Sheffield, England, May 2 -- When
18-year-old Tallyn Gray cast his ballot for city council today, it
was the first vote of his life. The high school senior in northern
England also was one of the first voters anywhere to cast an online
ballot in a governmental election. Gray became a pioneer in the
fast-moving world of e-democracy because Britain has gone further
than any other country in using high-tech communications techniques
for voting. As elections were held for 6,000 city council seats all
over England, voters cast their ballots on the Internet, over the
telephone and at touch-screen kiosks set up in public places. Voters
could also use the centuries-old method of marking an X on the
ballot at a polling place. In an effort to increase participation
by young people, Sheffield and several other cities allowed citizens
to vote by sending a text message from a cell phone. In a country
that has gone mad for this new medium -- Britain's 59 million people
send 43 million messages every day, according to the cellular
industry -- that innovation proved attractive. "I voted for council
from the front seat of my lorry," said John Waller, a truck driver.
"It would have taken me an hour to get to the polling station and
wait in the queue. But with my mobile [phone] it took 20 seconds. I
got a message right back that said, 'Thanx 4 Ur vote.' " "What
we're seeing here is probably the future of voting," said Mark
Prieto, president of Election.com Inc., the Garden City, N.Y., firm
that this city of 550,000 hired to help set up various methods of
e-voting. "The U.K. is ahead of other countries right now, but all
over the world governments are moving toward the Internet, the
telephone or interactive kiosks to make it easier for people to
vote." The United States is also moving in that direction, Prieto
said, an impulse that got a huge push from the debacle in Florida in
the 2000 presidential election. No U.S. jurisdiction allows online
voting, but Prieto said two states -- not yet selected -- will
experiment by allowing soldiers overseas to vote on the Internet
this fall. Britain is in the forefront of what it calls "21st
century voting" for several reasons. Prime Minister Tony Blair's
government has identified the Internet and mobile telephones as key
industries and has been looking for areas of daily life where
high-tech can be applied. Beyond that, the British were embarrassed
when voter turnout in last June's parliamentary election fell to 59
percent -- low by British standards. "Our research showed that the
difficulty of getting to the polling station was a factor for about
a third of the nonvoters," said Marie MacLean, of the national
Electoral Commission. "We hope that technology can eliminate that
problem." Gray cast his first vote at a touch-screen public
information kiosk, one of many the city has set up in parks, pubs,
public buildings and supermarkets all over town. Gray first entered
the personal number and password assigned to him on his voter
registration card. A ballot appeared on the screen, and he pointed
to his chosen candidate. "Your vote has been tallied," the screen
replied. The election also introduced instant runoff voting. Voters
made a second choice for each office, so that if no candidate
received a majority, the second-choice votes could be used to decide
the race.
Doncaster Mayoral and
Council Elections
The
Hartlepool Elections - 2002
Lewisham
Online: Your Council
Middlesbrough Election
for Mayor
Newham
Election 2002
North
Tyneside Council
Watford
Council: Supplementary Voting Explained
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