Single Transferable Vote Software
OpenSTV is open-source software for implementing the single transferable vote and other voting methods such as instant runoff voting, Condorcet voting, and approval voting. OpenSTV is the only open-source software that implements the single transferable vote exactly as used by governments, including Scotland and the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. These methods have been extensively verified against other software and/or actual election results.
Organizations can use OpenSTV to implement their own elections. First, the organization must adopt a voting method. Second, the organization must conduct the vote, and this will most likely be done with paper ballots. Third, the ballots must be entered into the OpenSTV program. Finally, you can use OpenSTV to count the votes and determine the winners of the election.
OpenSTV will run on MS Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. To download OpenSTV to your computer, select the download link at the top of the page. Please send questions to the email list:
openstv at googlegroups.com
Many users of OpenSTV are no doubt aware that voting is fascinating subject from a mathematical perspective. The American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics have announced that the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month 2008 is Math and Voting!
OpenSTV 1.2 is now available. The most significant changes in this release are the following:
- Changed output to be more descriptive and easier to read.
- Changed implementation of Supplemental Vote to use all rankings.
- Changed implementation of IRV to stop sooner (won't change outcome).
- Print substages for ERS97 STV.
- Now possible to have unlimited precision (but max is set to 20 for gui).
- Meek/Warren implemented in fixed point.
We would greatly appreciate assistance in further developing this
software. We are looking for Python programmers (or people willing to
learn). Please contact me if you are willing to help.
The city of Cambridge, MA has been using STV to elect its city council and school committee since 1941. Here are some links to interesting information about the 2007 election and historical information about every election going back to 1941. For instance, the 1941 city council election had more than 80 candidates and took 77 rounds of counting! All done by hand of course.
Voting matters Issue 24 is now online (note the new domain name).
In conjunction with my paper (with David Hill) on some technical details of the Droop quota, Henry Droop's seminal paper on his eponymous quota has been published as part of this issue. Droop's paper has not been widely available in the public domain, as far as I know. Now it is, thanks in large part to the yeoman efforts of Vm editor Brian Wichmann.
It's worth a read.
OpenSTV has a fantastic new web page thanks to the hard work of Renee and Jesse at IDC WebDev. We hope that the new page will be a valuable source of information about STV and also hope to blog about STV events around the world. Please be patient as we add content to the website and check back regularly for more information.
