Editing Single transferable vote (section)

=== Origin ===
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The concept of transferable voting was first proposed by [[Thomas Wright Hill]] in 1819. The system remained unused in public elections until 1855, when [[Carl Andræ]] proposed a single transferable vote system for elections in Denmark, and his system was used in 1856 to elect the [[Rigsraad]] and from 1866 it was also adapted for indirect elections to the second chamber, the [[Landsting (Denmark)|Landsting]], until 1915.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://denstoredanske.dk/Samfund,_jura_og_politik/Samfund/Valgteorier_og_valgmetoder/Andræs_metode |title=Andræs metode &#124; Gyldendal – Den Store Danske |website=denstoredanske.dk|date=4 February 2009 }}</ref>

[[File:Thare.png|right|thumb|Thomas Hare]]

Although he was not the first to propose transferable votes, the British [[barrister]] Thomas Hare is generally credited with the conception of STV, and he developed the idea in 1857 independently of Andrae. Hare's view was that STV should be a means of "making the exercise of the suffrage a step in the elevation of the individual character, whether it be found in the majority or the minority." In Hare's original system, he further proposed that electors should have the opportunity of discovering which candidate their vote had ultimately counted for, to improve their personal connection with voting.{{sfn|Lambert|Lakeman|1955|p=245}} At the time of Hare's original proposal, the UK did not use the [[secret ballot]], so not only could the voter determine the ultimate role of their vote in the election, the MPs would have known who had voted for them. As Hare envisaged that the whole House of Commons be elected "at large", his proposal would have totally replaced geographical constituencies and local representation with what Hare called "constituencies of interest" or "unanimous constituencies" – those people who group themselves into a single voting block that actually votes for an MP. 

Although national election systems seldom use at-large districting, in many proportional representation systems the production of unanimous constituencies backing an elected member is achieved by the use of multi-member districts instead of single-member districts. By the late 1800s, [[Catherine Helen Spence]] in Australia and several others had amended Hare's proposal by adding multi-member districts instead of at-large voting.<ref>(Farrell and McAllister, The Australian Electoral System, p. 26</ref><ref>Spence, A Plea, p. 23</ref><ref>Report of meeting on "Proportional representation," or effective voting, held at River House, Chelsea, on Tuesday, July 10th 1894. Addressed by Miss Spence, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Courtney, Sir John Lubbock and Sir John Hall</ref>
Instead of a single member being said to represent a whole district of varied sentiment, as under first-past-the-post, under STV multiple members represent the range of sentiments present in a district, each one representing a "constituency of interest" made up of only those who voted for the specific elected member of their choice.<ref>Farrell and McAllister, The Australian Electoral System, p. 26</ref> In 1893, Spence described STV thusly: "the districts having been made large enough to return eight or ten members, the voter is allowed to vote for as many men as he would like to see in Parliament, but the vote only counts  for one, and that is the first candidate on the list who needs his vote and can use it."<ref>Report of the PR Congress, Chicago 1893, ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.'' https://archive.org/details/jstor-1009042/page/n1/mode/2up accessed 6 March 2025</ref> 

The political essayist [[John Stuart Mill]] was a friend of Hare's and an early proponent of STV, praising it at length in his essay ''[[Considerations on Representative Government]]'', in which he writes: "Of all modes in which a national representation can possibly be constituted, this one affords the best security for the intellectual qualifications desirable in the representatives. At present... the only persons who can get elected are those who possess local influence, or make their way by lavish expenditure...."{{sfn|Mill|1861|p=144}} His contemporary, [[Walter Bagehot]], also praised the Hare system for allowing everyone to elect an MP, even ideological minorities, but also argued that the Hare system would create more problems than it solved: "[the Hare system] is inconsistent with the extrinsic independence as well as the inherent moderation of a Parliament – two of the conditions we have seen, are essential to the bare possibility of parliamentary government."{{sfn|Bagehot|1894|loc=[[File:Wikisource-logo.svg|12px|alt=Wikisource page link]]&nbsp;[[s:Page:The English Constitution (1894).djvu/238|p. 158]]}}

Through the efforts of Catherine Helen Spence, John S. Mill and others, advocacy of STV spread throughout the [[British Empire]], leading it to be sometimes known as ''British Proportional Representation''.<!-- Think that was noted in Lambert & Lakeman--> In 1896, [[Andrew Inglis Clark]] was successful in persuading the [[Tasmanian House of Assembly]] to be the first parliament in the world to be at least partially elected by a form of STV, specifically the ''[[Hare-Clark electoral system]]'', named after himself and Thomas Hare. [[H. G. Wells]] was a strong advocate, calling it "''proportional representation''".{{sfn|Wells|1918|pp=121–129}} The HG Wells formula for scientific voting, repeated, over many years, in his PR writings, to avoid misunderstanding, is proportional representation by the single transferable vote in large constituencies.<ref>HG Wells 1916: The Elements of Reconstruction. HG Wells 1918: In The Fourth Year.</ref>

STV in large constituencies and multiple-member districts permits an approach to the Hare-Mill-Wells ideal of mirror representation. The UK National Health Service previously used the [[first-past-the-post]] system in local or regional elections, and only white male general practitioners were elected to the General Medical Council. In 1979, the UK National Health Service used STV to proportionally elect women and immigrant GPs, and specialists, to the General Medical Council.<ref>Electoral Reform Society, 1979 audit, which records the gratitude of the British medical profession for introducing STV.</ref>