Queen Lion of the Animal Kingdom is displeased.

She recently introduced

elections for the office of king using the first post the post voting system.
While her Realm started out as a healthy democracy with many parties
running candidates for king, it quickly devolved into two party rule, with
the citizens not liking either one but trapped within the system because
of a problem called the spoiler effect.
However, one of Queen Lions subjects from a distant land, Wallaby, has
a solution: The Alternative Vote. Whats the difference? To find out, lets
follow one voter on election day, Red Squirrel, under both systems.
There are five candidates running for king, two members of the big
parties Gorilla and Leopard and three other candidates, Turtle, Owl and
Tiger. Under first-past-the-post Red Squirrel gets a ballot where he picks
just one candidate. Red Squirrel Really likes Turtle and even campaigned
for him. However he knows that his new neighbor, Grey Squirrel, is
voting Gorilla. And what, starts to wonder Red Squirrel, about all the
other animals? Who are they going to vote for? The debates on Animal
News Network only had the big parties, so Red Squirrel thinks its going
to be a close race between Gorilla and Leopard. While hes indifferent
toward Gorilla he is deathly afraid of Leopard. Because he can only pick
a single candidate, he gives his one vote to Gorilla in hopes of
preventing Leopard from becoming king. This is strategic voting, and its
a necessity under First Past the Post. But now its time to look at the
Alternative Vote, which wallaby explains to Red Squirrel. Instead of
picking one and only one candidate, he can rank them in order of his
most favorite to his least. He goes into the voting both and gets the
same ballot as before, but now puts Turtle as his first choice, Owl as his
second and
Gorilla, third. He dislikes Leopard and Tiger equally so he stops filling in
his ballot and drops it in the box. At this point, Red Squirrel doesnt care
exactly what happens, he has other things on his mind and heads off.
But you, dear citizen, want to know how the votes are counted so here
goes: Turtle, beloved though he is with some of the citizenry, comes in
last place with only 5% and he is eliminated from the race.
Because the voters ranked their candidates in order, we can know what
would have happened

if Turtle didnt run. Without Turtle, voters like Red Squirrel,

would have picked Owl instead, so their votes are transferred to her as
though Turtle was

never in the race at all. This is why Alternative Vote is sometimes

called Instant Runoff Voting. Its able to simulate a bunch of elections

where the

least popular candidate is eliminated after each round without all the
time and expense

it would take to run a bunch of campaigns, one after another.

The Alternative Vote method keeps eliminated the least popular

candidate until someone

either wins a majority or is the only one left.

As no one has a majority yet, the next lowest candidate, Tiger, is

eliminated. Tiger voters

listed leopard as their second choice, so she gets Tigers votes.

In the last round, Gorilla is eliminated. Gorilla voters listed Owl as their
second

choice, so Owl gets those votes, wins a majority, so is crowed king.

The alternative vote is a better system because it produces winners that

a larger number of

voters agree on. While the Alternative Vote does have flaws

its important to note that any problem AV has, first past the post shares.

Theyre both susceptible to gerrymandering, they arent proportional

systems, they cant

guarantee a Condorcet winner (which math geeks hate but there isnt
time to explain here),

and over time they both trend toward two main parties.

That being said, Alternative Vote has a huge advantage that first past
the post lacks and

makes it a mathematically superior method: no spoiler effect!

Imagine this election: the two big candidates are running, Gorilla and
Leopard, and Leopard

looks set to win 55% to 45%. But then a third party candidate, Tiger,
enters.

Tiger manages to convince 15% of the Leopard voters to back him. Now
the results are:

Under first past the post, gorilla now wins even though a majority of the
voters didnt

want him. Under the Alternative Vote, because all Tiger

voters put Leopard as second choice, Leopard still wins because a

majority of the citizens

of the animal kingdom would rather have her in charge than gorilla.

With AV citizens can help support and grow smaller parties that they
agree without worrying

theyll put someone they dont like into office.

After examining the differences, Queen Lion decrees that the Alternative
Vote is to be

the rule of the land for electing the king and everyone is happier. well
almost everyone.

The two big parties cant be complacent and need to campaign harder
for their votes.

This has been The Alternative Vote Explained by me C. G. P. Grey.

Thank you very much for watching.