[EL] disqualified losing candidates upsetting election?

[Jack Santucci]

In days of yore, when several large American cities used the single
transferable vote, there were essentially two methods for filling
unforeseen vacancies:

1) have the sitting council fill the empty seat;

2) consult subsequent preferences on ballots, seating the person who would
have won in the absence of candidacy by the vacating council member.

Of course, the analogy to your scenario is by no means perfect.

Assuming strategy (2) above, does one count the ballots on which the
vacating council member was elected? Was that pile even retained? If not,
simply seat the runner-up from the aggregate tally?

These cities essentially used OPV. I am not aware of any in which a ballot
was invalid if fewer than all rankings were used. This is because I have
not seen any reference to mandatory full ranking, and it is because
aggregate election results typically reported more exhausted ballots than
one would see as the result of losing slates alone.

Jack

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 10:45 PM, Graeme Orr <graeme.orr2008 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> My home state Queensland had an election last weekend.   Hung
> parliament.
>
> In a key, very tight seat, a minor party candidate was nominated.  He
> scored 3%.   Turns out he was a bankrupt: so not qualified to be nominated
> or elected.
>
> My urgent request is for any comparative precedent, especially UK or US.
>
> *Is there precedent for an election contest/petition upsetting a close
> result, on the ground that the voters for the unqualified candidate might
> have plumped for another candidate on the ballot, rendering the result
> uncertain?*
>
> It’s likely to go to court next month given the fate of the potential
> incoming Labor government hangs on it.  So I’m fielding calls from media,
> officials and wannabe lawyers!       Nb my state has compulsory voting; and
> OPV or 'optional preferential voting' (rank as many candidates as you
> like).   There is Australian precedent that in first-past-the-post races,
> the presence of an unqualified losing candidate can lead to a new
> election.   But where full preferences are required, the precedent is that
> they cannot.    OPV lies somewhere inbetween.   (ps I'm aware of the old UK
> rule about 'votes thrown away', but that relates to a plurality winner.)
>
> thanks
> Graeme Orr
> g.orr at law.uq.edu.au
> Professor, Law, University of Queensland, Australia
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20150205/08f984b9/attachment.html>