James W. Endersby
[Department of Political Science, University of Missouri, 113 Professional Building, Columbia, MO 65211, USA]
Michael J. Towle:
[Department of Political Science, Mount St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD 21727, USA]
Making wasted votes count: Turnout, transfers, and preferential voting in practice,
Electoral Studies (Elsevier) 33 (2014) 144-152
DOI=10.1016/j.electstud.2013.07.001
Keywords:
Voting Elections Single Transferable Vote Preferential Voting Voter Turnout

Abstract:
 Proponents of electoral reform champion the single transferable vote (STV) or 
aligned forms of preferential voting (AV, IRV, RCV) as a method to improve 
participation among and representation of the general public. Voters provide an 
ordinal ranking among alternatives on the ballot, and ballots not used to elect a
candidate are transferred to another favored alternative. Preferential voting is 
intended to encourage both citizen participation in an election and sincere voting. 
Yet the empirical evidence about the effects of preferential voting in the scholarly
literature is scant. Elections of members to the Dail Eireann, the lower house of
national parliament in Ireland, provide a wealth of data on preferential voting.
Data from four recent Irish elections (1997, 2002, 2007, and 2011) are analyzed
to assess the effectiveness of STV on reducing wasted votes. The number of 
nontransferable ballots, votes not used for any candidate, is large and
increases as the need for lower level preferences (that is, later 
counts or rounds) grows. Voter turnout does not correspond to preferential
voting in predictable ways; turnout declines as the number of
candidates elected increases. Although preferential voting systems have much to
offer, their effects need to be evaluated.

Excerpt:
Central to arguments in favor of preferential voting is that
such systems increase voter participation and reduce the
incidence of the so-called "wasted vote."
[But the question they address is: really?]