Madam,

Good news that the Labour Party “welcomes proposed changes to local elections” (last week’s Cambrian News). One aspect of reform, usually neglected, is the importance of the way votes are counted. Say in a ward, for example, that three candidates get 45 per cent, 35 per cent and 20 per cent of the vote. The usual reform suggestion is to redistribute the third place 20 per cent of votes between the other candidates according to those voters’ second and third choices, in order to determine the overall winner (single transferable vote, in effect). But what if the third place candidate with 20 per cent is also the second choice of all the other voters? For then, that third-placed candidate beats each of the other candidates in direct voting comparison and so is the real democratic winner - whom STV has rejected!

This is not idle academic speculation. In local elections where local champions and rigid party adherence may determine how many vote, a candidate whom all recognise as conscientious, hard-working and concerned, may go under, purely because of the method of vote counting used. Direct comparison, candidate by candidate, the winner winning by knock-out of all other candidates, avoids this very real difficulty.

Yours etc,

Ian MacIntyre, Shelbourne Court, St John’s Hill, Barmouth.

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