History
Instant runoff voting was devised in 1871 by American architect William Robert Ware, although it is, in effect, a special case of the single transferable vote system, which emerged independently in the 1850s. Unlike the single transferable vote in multi-seat elections, however, the only ballot transfers are from backers of candidates who have been eliminated.
The first known use of an IRV-like system in a governmental election was in 1893 in an election for the colonial government of Queensland, in Australia. The variant used for this election was a "contingent vote". IRV in its true form was first used in 1908 in a State election in Western Australia.
IRV was introduced nationally in Australia in 1918 after the Swan by-election, in response to the rise of the conservative Country Party, representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Corangamite by-election on 14 December 1918. Thomas Hare and Andrew Inglis Clark had previously introduced it in the Tasmanian House of Assembly.
Read more about this topic: Alternative Voting
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)