• Under transferable voting, a candidate wins if his or her first-choice votes reach the number needed to win, or the “threshold.” If no candidate reaches the threshold, the least-preferred candidate is dropped and his or her votes transfer to the next-preferred candidate on each ballot. If a candidate reaches the threshold with an excess, that excess still transfers — after being discounted by the non-excess fraction needed to reach the threshold — among the surviving candidates. Each transfer preserves each vote as long as at least one candidate that the voter ranked survives. The redistribution continues until enough candidates reach the threshold or the number of surviving candidates equals the number of representatives still to be elected. See DROOP QUOTA.
— Also termed STV; transferable vote; choice voting.
