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Theelectoral threshold, orelection threshold, is the minimum share of votes that a candidate or political party requires before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in alegislature.
This limit can operate in various ways; for example, inparty-list proportional representation systems where an electoral threshold requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes (e.g. 5%), either nationally or in a particular electoral district, to obtain seats in the legislature. Insingle transferable voting, the election threshold is called thequota, and it is possible to achieve it by receiving first-choice votes alone or by a combination of first-choice votes and votes transferred from other candidates based on lower preferences. It is also a common occurrence to see someone elected with less than the quota in STV.[1][2]
In mixed-member-proportional (MMP) systems, the election threshold determines which parties are eligible for top-up seats in the legislative chamber. Some MMP systems still allow a party to retain the seats they won in electoral districts even when they did not meet the threshold nationally; in some of these systems, top-up seats are allocated to parties that do not achieve the electoral threshold if they have won at least one district seat or have met some other minimum qualification.
The effect of this electoral threshold is to deny representation to small parties or to force them into coalitions. Such restraint is intended to make the election system more stable by keeping out fringe parties. Proponents of a stiff electoral threshold say that having a few seats in a legislature can significantly boost the profile of a party and that providing representation and possibly veto power for a party that receives only 1 percent of the vote is not appropriate.[3] However, others argue that in the absence of aranked ballot or proportional voting system at the district level, supporters of minor parties, barred from top-up seats, are effectively disenfranchised and denied the right to be represented by someone of their choosing.
Two boundaries can be defined – a threshold of representation (or threshold of inclusion)[4] is the minimum vote share that might yield a party a seat under the most favorable circumstances for the party, while the threshold of exclusion is the maximum vote share that could be insufficient to yield a seat under the least favorable circumstances.Arend Lijphart suggested calculating the informal threshold as the mean of these.[5] Michael Gallagher gave this value the nameeffective threshold and set it at 75 percent of the Droop quota. However, he warned that this was to be used at the district level and not to assume that a party with a certain share of the overall vote was sure to have representation.[6]
The electoral threshold is abarrier to entry forpolitical parties to the political competition.[7] But some barrier to entry is seen in any system, due to the effective threshold produced by district magnitude (DM) and due to the effect of wasted votes caused by the election system being used. For instance, under first past the post election system, only one party can win the one seat in a district, and all others are not elected, whether one of them has 49 percent of the vote or the winner has just 20 percent of the vote. In very proportional election systems, each member is elected by about the same number of votes (approximately equivalent to the Hare quota if there are very few wasted votes), and anything less than that number is insufficient to receive representation. In systems where DM varies from district to district, a district with exceptionally high district magnitude, such as may be used in the largest city, may allow representation to small parties that do not have a chance for any representation at all in other districts where DM is low. Conversely, where many districts are used (and thus average DM is low), the effective threshold for a party to potentially take at least one seat is also low.[8]
TheParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommends for parliamentary elections a threshold not higher than three percent.[9]
Forsingle transferable vote, to produce representation for parties with approximately ten percent or more of the overall vote, John M. Carey and Simon Hix recommended a district magnitude (DM) of approximately six or more.[10][11] Support for a party is not homogeneous across an electorate, so a party with ten percent of the vote is expected to easily achieve the electoral threshold in at least one district even if not in others. Most STV systems used today use theDroop quota, which in a six-member district is 14 percent of the votes cast in the district. Carey and Hix note that increasing the DM from one to six produces an improvement in proportionality that is much higher than any subsequent increase in DM, pointing out that the most popular parties take the largest share of votes and the largest share of seats in any PR system, leaving few to small parties under any system.[11] Transfers of votes from other parties to a party and willingness of the party's voters to mark alternate preferences (and thus prevent their vote from being exhausted) also play a role in the amount of representation that each party takes, and is somewhat independent of the party's vote share in the first count. Due to the effect of districting, a party is not assured of taking its proportional share of seats, but with the use of districts with a DM of 6, it is expected that a party with more than ten percent of the overall vote will elect at least one member, according to Carey and Hix.[citation needed]
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In Poland'sSejm, Lithuania'sSeimas, Germany'sBundestag, Kazakhstan'sMäjilis and New Zealand'sHouse of Representatives, the threshold is five percent (in Poland, additionally eight percent for a coalition of two or more parties submitting a jointelectoral list and in Lithuania, additionally seven percent for coalition). However, in Germany and New Zealand, if a party wins a constituency seat, the threshold does not apply.[citation needed]
Israel'sKnesset uses a threshold of 3.25 percent. (It was 1% before 1992, 1.5% from 1992 to 2003, and 2% from 2003 to 2014.)[citation needed] TheTurkish parliament uses an electoral threshold of seven percent.[citation needed] In Poland, ethnic minority parties do not have to reach a threshold to get into the parliament, so there is often a small German minority representation in theSejm.[citation needed] In Romania, a different threshold is used for ethnic minority parties than for national parties that run for theChamber of Deputies.[citation needed]
Several countries – including Finland, Namibia,[12] North Macedonia, Portugal and South Africa – use proportional representation systems that have no legally set electoral threshold.
TheAustralian Senate is elected using the single transferable vote (STV) and does not use an electoral threshold or have a predictable "natural" or "hidden" threshold. The quota ensures the election of candidates, but it is also possible to be elected with less than quota at the end of the count. At a normal election, each state returns six senators and theAustralian Capital Territory and theNorthern Territory each return two. (For the states, the number is doubled in adouble dissolution election.) As such, the quota for election (as determined through the Droop quota) is 14.3 percent or 33.3 percent respectively. (For the states, the quota for election is halved in a double dissolution election, when twice the members are elected.) However, as STV allows votes to be transferred even across party lines, candidates who receive less than the quota for election in the first round of counting may reach the Droop quota and be certain of election, or at least have enough to be elected with less than the quota. Therefore, the sixth (or, at adouble dissolution election, the 12th) Senate seat in each state is often won by a candidate of a party who received considerably less than the Droop quota in primary votes. For example, at the2022 election, the sixth Senate seat inVictoria was won by theUnited Australia Party even though it won only four percent of the primary vote in that state. The successful UAP candidate,Ralph Babet, had personally accumulated a vote tally equivalent to 12 percent of the votes cast by the end, which due to seven percent being exhausted, meant he was the most popular when only he and one other candidate were still in the running.[13]
Germany'smixed-member proportional system has a threshold of five percent of party-list votes for full proportional representation in theBundestag in federal elections.[citation needed] However, this is not a stringent barrier to entry: any party or independent who wins a constituency is entitled to that seat whether or not they have passed the threshold. Parties representing registered ethnic minorities have no threshold and receive proportional representation should they gain the mathematical minimum number of votes nationally to do so.[14] The2021 election demonstrated the exception for ethnic minority parties: theSouth Schleswig Voters' Association entered the Bundestag with just 0.1 percent of the vote nationally as a registered party for Danish and Frisian minorities inSchleswig-Holstein.[citation needed] The 5% threshold also applies to all state elections; there is none forEuropean Parliament elections.[citation needed]
German electoral law also includes theGrundmandatsklausel ('basic mandate clause'), which grants full proportional seating to parties winning at least three constituencies as if they had passed the electoral threshold, even if they did not. This rule is intended to benefit parties with regional appeal.[15] This clause has come into effect in two elections:in 1994, when theParty of Democratic Socialism, which had significantly higher support in the formerEast Germany, won 4.4 percent of party-list votes and four constituencies, and in 2021, when its successor,Die Linke, won 4.9 percent and three constituencies. This clause was repealed by a 2023 law intended to reduce the size of theBundestag. However, after complaints from Die Linke and theChristian Social Union, theFederal Constitutional Court ruled a threshold with no exceptions was unconstitutional. The court provisionally reintroduced the basic mandate clause for the2025 federal election.[16]
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In Norway, the nationwide electoral threshold of four percent applies only toleveling seats. A party with sufficient local support may still win the regular district seats, even if the party fails to meet the threshold. For example, the 2021 election saw theGreen Party andChristian Democratic Party each win three district seats, andPatient Focus winning one district seat despite missing the threshold.
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In Slovenia, the threshold was set at 3 parliamentary seats during parliamentary elections in 1992 and 1996. This meant that the parties needed to win about 3.2 percent of the votes in order to pass the threshold. In 2000, the threshold was raised to 4 percent of the votes.
In Sweden, there is a nationwide threshold of four percent for theRiksdag, but if a party reaches 12 percent in any electoral constituency, it will take part in the seat allocation for that constituency.[17] As of the2022 election, nobody has been elected based on the 12 percent rule.
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In the United States, as the majority of elections are conducted under thefirst-past-the-post system, legal electoral thresholds do not apply. It is possible to be elected with less than half the votes in a district.
However, several states have threshold requirements for parties to obtain automaticballot access to the next general election without having to submit voter-signed petitions. The threshold requirements have no practical bearing on the two main political parties (theRepublican andDemocratic parties) as they easily meet the requirements, but have come into play for theGreen,Libertarian and other minor parties. The threshold rules also restrict independent candidates' access to the ballot.
| Country | Lower (or sole) house | Upper house | Other elections | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For individual parties | For other types | Other threshold | |||
| Benin | 10%[18] | ||||
| Burundi | 2%[19] | ||||
| Lesotho | None, natural threshold ~0.4% | ||||
| Mozambique | 5%[20] | ||||
| Namibia | None, natural threshold ~0.69% | 6 seats appointed by president | |||
| Rwanda | 5% | ||||
| South Africa | None, natural threshold ~0.2% | ||||
| Country | Lower (or sole) house | Upper house | Other elections | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For individual parties | For other types | Other threshold | |||
| Australia | Single-member districts for theHouse of Representatives | None, natural threshold ~8.4-34% forSenate elections (1 seat equivalent), depending on the number of seatsup for election | |||
| East Timor | 4%[21][22][23] | ||||
| Fiji | 5% | ||||
| Indonesia | 4%[24] | ||||
| Israel | 3.25%[25] | ||||
| Kazakhstan | 5% | ||||
| Kyrgyzstan | 5% and 0.5% of the vote in each of the seven regions | ||||
| Nepal | 3% vote each under theproportional representation category and at least one seat under thefirst-past-the-post voting | ||||
| New Zealand | 5%[26] | 1 constituency seat | |||
| Palestine | 2% | ||||
| Philippines | 2% | Other parties can still qualify if the 20% of the seats have not been filled up. | |||
| South Korea | 3%[27] | 5 constituency seats | 10% (local council elections)[28] | ||
| Taiwan | 5%[29] | ||||
| Tajikistan | 5%[30] | ||||
| Thailand | None, natural threshold ~0.1%[31] | ||||
| Country | Lower (or sole) house | Upper house | Other elections | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For individual parties | For other types | Other threshold | |||
| Albania | 3% | 5% for multi-party alliances to each electoral area level[32] | |||
| Andorra | 7.14% (1⁄14 of votes cast)[33] | ||||
| Armenia | 5% | 7% for multi-party alliances | |||
| Austria | 4% | 0% for ethnic minorities | |||
| Belgium | 5% (at constituency level; no national threshold) | ||||
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 3% (at constituency level; no national threshold) | ||||
| Bulgaria | 4% | ||||
| Croatia | 5% (at constituency level; no national threshold) | ||||
| Cyprus | 3.6% | 1.8% in European Parliament elections | |||
| Czech Republic | 5% | 8% for bipartite alliances, 11% for multi-party alliances; does not apply for EU elections | |||
| Denmark | 2%[34][35] | 1 constituency seat | |||
| Estonia | 5% | ||||
| Finland | None, but high natural threshold due to multiple districts | ||||
| France | Not applicable | 5% in European Parliament elections[36] and in municipal elections for cities with at least 1000 habitants[37][38] | |||
| Georgia | 5%[39] | 3% for local elections in all municipalities butTbilisi (2.5%)[39] | |||
| Germany | 5% | 0% for ethnic minorities | 0% in European Parliament elections | ||
| Greece | 3% | ||||
| Hungary | 5% | 10% for bipartite alliances, 15% for multi-party alliances, 0.26% for ethnic minorities (for the first seat only) | |||
| Ireland | Natural threshold 8 – 12% because 3 to 5 seats in each constituency | ||||
| Iceland | 5% (only for compensatory seats)[40] | ||||
| Italy | 3% | 10% (party alliances), but a list must reach at least 3%, 1% (parties of party alliances), 20% or two constituencies (ethnic minorities) | 3% | 4% in European Parliament elections | |
| Kosovo | 5% | ||||
| Latvia | 5% | ||||
| Liechtenstein | 8% | ||||
| Lithuania | 5% | 7% for party alliances | |||
| Malta | natural threshold 12% due to district magnitude of 5 | ||||
| Moldova | 5% | 3% (non-party), 12% (party alliances) | |||
| Monaco | 5%[41] | ||||
| Montenegro | 3% | Special rules apply for candidate lists representing national minority communities.[42] | |||
| Netherlands | 0.67% (percent of votes needed for one seat; parties failing to reach this threshold have no right to a possible remainder seat)[43][44] | 3.23% for European Parliament elections (percent of votes needed for one seat; parties failing to reach this threshold have no right to a possible remainder seat) | |||
| Northern Cyprus | 5% | ||||
| North Macedonia | None, but high natural threshold due to multiple districts | ||||
| Norway | 4% (only for compensatory seats) | ||||
| Poland | 5% | 8% (alliances; does not apply for EU elections); 0% (ethnic minorities) | |||
| Portugal | None, but high natural threshold due to multiple districts | ||||
| Romania | 5% | 10% (alliances) | |||
| Russia | 5% | ||||
| San Marino | 5%[45] | ||||
| Scotland | 5% | ||||
| Spain | 3% (constituency). Ceuta and Melilla usefirst-past-the-post system. | None | 5% for local elections. Variable in regional elections. | ||
| Sweden | 4% (national level) 12% (constituency) | Municipalities: 2% or 3% Regions: 3%European parliament: 4%[17] | |||
| Switzerland | None, but high natural threshold in some electoral districts | ||||
| Serbia | 3%[46] | 0% for ethnic minorities[47][46] | |||
| Slovakia | 5% | 7% for bi- and tri-partite alliances, 10% for 4- or more-party alliances[48] | |||
| Slovenia | 4% | ||||
| Turkey | 7%[49] | 7% for multi-party alliances. Parties in an alliance not being subject to any nationwide threshold individually. No threshold for independent candidates. | |||
| Ukraine | 5%[50] | ||||
| Wales | 5% | ||||
The electoral threshold forelections to the European Parliament varies for each member state, a threshold of up to 5 percent is applied for individual electoral districts, no threshold is applied across the whole legislative body.[51]
| Country | Lower (or sole) house | Upper house | Other elections | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For individual parties | For other types | Other threshold | |||
| Costa Rica | None, but high natural threshold due to its use of some multiple-member districts with less than 10 seats | ||||
| Mexico | 3% | ||||
| Country | Lower (or sole) house | Upper house | Other elections | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For individual parties | For other types | Other threshold | |||
| Argentina | 3% of registered voters[52] | 1.5% of valid votes forprimaries | |||
| Bolivia | 3% | ||||
| Brazil | No national electoral threshold, for parties threshold is 80% of the natural threshold in the district; for candidates 20% of the natural threshold in the district.[53][54] | threshold for financial contributions is 2% at constituency level or 11 deputies in 9 states,[55][56][57] increasing 2026 to 2.5% and 2030 to 3% | |||
| Chile | None, but high natural threshold due to its use of multiple-member districts with less than 10 seats | ||||
| Colombia | 3% | ||||
| Ecuador | None, but high natural threshold due to its use of multiple-member districts with less than 10 seats | ||||
| Paraguay | None, but high natural threshold due to its use of multiple-member districts with less than 10 seats | ||||
| Peru | 5%[58] | ||||
| Uruguay | 1% | 3% | |||
The GermanFederal Constitutional Court rejected an electoral threshold for theEuropean Parliament in 2011 and in 2014 based on the principle ofone person, one vote.[59] In the case of Turkey, in 2004 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared the threshold of 10 percent to be manifestly excessive and asked Turkey to lower it.[60] On 30 January 2007 theEuropean Court of Human Rights ruled by five votes to two and on 8 July 2008, its Grand Chamber by 13 votes to four that the former 10 percent threshold imposed in Turkey does not violate the right to free elections (Article 3 of Protocol 1 of theECHR).[61] It held, however, that this same threshold could violate the Convention if imposed in a different country. It was justified in the case of Turkey in order to stabilize the volatile political situation over recent decades.[62][63]
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The number of seats in eachelectoral district creates a "hidden" natural threshold (also called an effective, or informal threshold). The number of votes that means that a party is guaranteed a seat can be calculated by the formula () where ε is the smallest possible number of votes. That means that in a district with four seats slightly more than 20 percent of the votes will guarantee a seat. Under more favorable circumstances, the party can still win a seat with fewer votes.[64] The most important factor in determining the natural threshold is the number of seats to be filled by the district. Other factors are the seat allocation formula (Saint-Laguë,D'Hondt orHare), the number of contestant political parties and the size of the assembly. Generally, smaller districts leads to a higher proportion of votes needed to win a seat and vice versa.[65] The lower bound (the threshold of representation or the percentage of the vote that allows a party to earn a seat under the most favorable circumstances) is more difficult to calculate. In addition to the factors mentioned earlier, the number of votes cast for smaller parties are important. If more votes are cast for parties that do not win any seat, that will mean a lower percentage of votes needed to win a seat.[64]
In some elections, the natural threshold may be higher than the legal threshold. In Spain, the legal threshold is three percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—with most constituencies having less than 10 deputies, includingSoria with only two. Another example of this effect areelections to the European Parliament. In theCyprus EU constituency, the legal threshold is 1.8 percent,[66] explicitly replacing the threshold for national election which is 3.6 percent.[67] Cyprus only has 6MEPs, raising the natural threshold. An extreme example of this was inthe 2004 EU Parliament elections, whereFor Europe won 36,112 votes (10.80%) andEDEK won 36,075 votes (10.79%); despite both parties crossing the threshold by a high margin and a difference of only 37 votes, only "For Europe" returned an MEP to the European Parliament.[68]
Other examples include:
In Moldova, eachindependent politician needs 2% to be elected despite the fact that there are 101 seats in total (so worth 2.02 seats).[79]
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An extreme example occurred in Turkey following the2002 Turkish general election, where almost none of the 550 incumbent MPs were returned. This was a seismic shift that rocked Turkish politics to its foundations. None of the political parties that had passed the thresholdin 1999, passed it again:DYP received only 9.55 percent of the popular vote,MHP received 8.34 percent,GP 7.25 percent,DEHAP 6.23 percent,ANAP 5.13 percent,SP 2.48 percent andDSP 1.22 percent. The aggregate number ofwasted votes was an unprecented 46.33 percent (14,545,438). As a result,Erdoğan'sAKP gained power, winning more than two-thirds of the seats inthe Parliament with just 34.28 percent of the vote, with only one opposition party (CHP, which by itself failed to pass threshold in 1999) and 9 independents.
Other dramatic events can be produced by the loophole often added inmixed-member proportional representation (used throughout Germany since 1949, New Zealand since 1993): there the threshold rule for party lists includes an exception for parties that won 3 (Germany) or 1 (New Zealand)single-member districts. The party list vote helps calculate the desirable number of MPs for each party. Major parties can help minor ally parties overcome the hurdle, by letting them win one or a few districts:
The failure of one party to reach the threshold not only deprives their candidates of office and their voters of representation; it also changes thepower index in the assembly, which may have dramatic implications for coalition-building.
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There has been cases of attempts to circumvent thresholds:
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Electoral thresholds can sometimes seriously affect the relationship between the percentages of the popular vote achieved by each party and the distribution of seats. The proportionality between seat share and popular vote can be measured by theGallagher index while the number ofwasted votes is a measure of the total number of voters not represented by any party sitting in the legislature.[citation needed]
The failure of one party to reach the threshold not only deprives their candidates of office and their voters of representation; it also changes thepower index in the assembly, which may have dramatic implications for coalition-building.[citation needed]
The number of wasted votes changes from one election to another, here shown for New Zealand.[83] The wasted vote changes depending on voter behavior and size of effective electoral threshold,[84] for example in2005 New Zealand general election every party above 1 percent received seats due to the electoral threshold in New Zealand of at least one seat in first-past-the-post voting, which caused a much lower wasted vote compared to the other years.
In theRussian parliamentary elections in 1995, with a threshold excluding parties under 5 percent, more than 45 percent of votes went to parties that failed to reach the threshold. In 1998, the Russian Constitutional Court found the threshold legal, taking into account limits in its use.[85]
After the first implementation of the threshold in Poland in1993 34.4 percent of the popular vote did not gain representation.[citation needed]
There had been a similar situation inTurkey, which had a 10 percent threshold, easily higher than in any other country.[86] The justification for such a high threshold was to prevent multi-party coalitions and put a stop to the endless fragmentation of political parties seen in the 1960s and 1970s. However, coalitions ruled between 1991 and 2002, but mainstream parties continued to be fragmented and in the2002 elections as many as 45 percent of votes were cast for parties which failed to reach the threshold and were thus unrepresented in the parliament.[87] All parties which won seats in 1999 failed to cross the threshold, thus givingJustice and Development Party 66 percent of the seats.[citation needed]
In theUkrainian elections of March 2006, for which there was a threshold of 3 percent (of the overall vote, i.e. including invalid votes), 22 percent of voters were effectivelydisenfranchised, having voted for minor candidates. In theparliamentary election held under the same system, fewer voters supported minor parties and the total percentage of disenfranchised voters fell to about 12 percent.[citation needed]
In Bulgaria, 24 percent of voters cast their ballots for parties that would not gain representation in the elections of1991 and2013.[citation needed]
In the2020 Slovak parliamentary election, 28.47 percent of all valid votes did not gain representation.[88] In the2021 Czech legislative election 19.76 percent of voters were not represented.[89] In the2022 Slovenian parliamentary election 24 percent of the vote went to parties which did not reach the 4 percent threshold including several former parliamentary parties (LMŠ,PoS,SAB,SNS andDeSUS).
In the Philippines, elections to theHouse of Representatives are via parallel voting, withparty-list seats always 20% of seats, with 80% of the seats elected fromcongressional districts underfirst-past-the-post voting. Under this system, no party under the party-list system can win more than three seats, no matter how many votes it garnered. With more than a hundred parties participating in each election since 1998, the electoral threshold of 2% saw few parties surpass that, and led to few seats being awarded, which led to not all of the party-list seats being filled. The low number of parties surpassing the threshold also meant a majority of votes were wasted to losing parties. The three-seat cap also led to wasted vote on parties that were entitled to more than three seats. For example, in the2004 election, more than 35% of the vote was wasted to losing parties, and only 28 out of the supposed 55 seats were allocated. APhilippines Supreme Court decision in 2009 allowed parties with less than 2% of the vote to win a seat each until all party-list seats have been allocated. This has led to all seats reserved for party-lists being allocated for, and decreased the wasted vote on parties that did not win a seat. This led to the wasted votes to decrease just over 30% in the2010 election, then further to over 26% inin 2025.[citation needed]
Electoral thresholds can produce aspoiler effect, similar to that in thefirst-past-the-post voting system, in which minor parties unable to reach the threshold take votes away from other parties with similar ideologies. Fledgling parties in these systems often find themselves in avicious circle: if a party is perceived as having no chance of meeting the threshold, it often cannot gain popular support; and if the party cannot gain popular support, it will continue to have little or no chance of meeting the threshold. As well as acting against extremist parties, it may also adversely affect moderate parties if the political climate becomes polarized between two major parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In such a scenario, moderate voters may abandon their preferred party in favour of a more popular party in the hope of keeping the even less desirable alternative out of power.
On occasion, electoral thresholds have resulted in a party winning an outright majority of seats without winning an outright majority of votes, the sort of outcome that a proportional voting system is supposed to prevent. For instance, the TurkishAKP won a majority of seats with less than 50 percent of votes in three consecutive elections (2002, 2007 and 2011). In the2013 Bavarian state election, theChristian Social Union failed to obtain a majority of votes, but nevertheless won an outright majority of seats due to a record number of votes for parties which failed to reach the threshold, including theFree Democratic Party (the CSU's coalition partner in the previous state parliament). In Germany in2013 15.7 percent voted for a party that did not meet the five percent threshold.
In contrast, elections that use theranked voting system can take account of each voter's complete indicated ranking preference. For example, thesingle transferable vote redistributes first preference votes for candidates below the threshold. This permits the continued participation in the election by those whose votes would otherwise be wasted. Minor parties can indicate to their supporters before the vote how they would wish to see their votes transferred. The single transferable vote is a proportionalvoting system designed to achieveproportional representation throughranked voting inmulti-seat (as opposed to single seat) organizations orconstituencies (voting districts).[90]Ranked voting systems are widely used in Australia andIreland. Other methods of introducing ordinality into an electoral system can have similar effects.
