Plain English Explanation of Scottish STV

Scottish STV is a great method to use for electing a group of people. To help you and your voters understand how it works, we give a "plain English" explanation of how votes are counted with Scottish STV.

If you'd like to see additional details, you are welcome to review the statute passed by Scotland.

At a high level, the vote count takes place in rounds.  For the first round, you count the first place votes.  For subsequent rounds, you will either (1) transfer surplus votes from a candidate or (2) eliminate a candidate.  We'll assume that you've read our STV overview and understand what surplus votes are.

Ranked-Choice Voting Results in San Francisco

San Francisco is in the process of counting the ranked-choice voting ballots for its city elections.  To make it easier to visualize the results, we have also processed the ballots with OpaVote and are sharing our results.  You can see an example bar chart here, and click the links below for full results.

San Francisco is amazing in that they publish all of the ballot data.  You can download it yourself here.  We downloaded the ballot data, converted it into the BLT format used by OpaVote, counted the ballots, and you can see our results here:

Increase Voter Turnout With Online Elections

Whether it's a condo or HOA election, a high school election, a university or college election, or a nonprofit election, improving voter turnout is a central concern. High voter participation makes for better representation and greater civic engagement. Establishing more voting locations is a traditional method of making voting easier, but what if you could put a ballot box in every voter's pocket?

OpaVote's online voting tool makes that possible. Online voting means no printing (and possibly misprinting) paper ballots. It means voter choices are clear, with no attempts to read half-erased selections. Online ballots are secure and private, and OpaVote offers multiple voting formats that allow voters to rank options, select single or multiple options, and you can add links to the ballot, a crucial detail in elections with ballot questions.

OpaVote offers the online voting tool of the future with prices for the present. OpaVote offers the same security and flexibility as its competitors at a fraction of the cost. You can quickly poll a committee for free, or have as many as 10,000 voters for an election cycle lasting more than a year for less than it costs to print and send paper ballots. You can do more than boost voter turnout with OpaVote. You can give your organization the tools it needs to connect with the people you value the most.

For more information, visit www.opavote.com!