To whom did my vote go?

2025-09-16

AI Summary

In Australia’s multi-jurisdictional Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system, voters struggle to comprehend how individual ballot papers dynamically transfer and have their vote weights reallocated across successive counting rounds. Method: This paper designs and implements an interactive web-based demonstration system that integrates STV vote-counting algorithm simulation, historical election data parsing, and visual analytics. The system enables users to input real ballot preferences and trace the precise transfer path of each ballot across rounds, along with its quantitative contribution to candidates’ vote tallies. Contribution/Results: As the first publicly accessible, ballot-level traceable visualization tool for STV elections, the system significantly enhances electoral transparency and civic political literacy. Empirical evaluation confirms its high computational accuracy and pedagogical effectiveness in supporting voter education and democratic engagement.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Voting
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Social Choice / Voting
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Preferences

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web learning to rank, online learning, and counterfactual learning for ranking
• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization

Abstract

Single Transferable Vote (STV) counting, used in several jurisdictions in Australia, is a system for choosing multiple election winners given voters' preferences among candidates. The system is complex and it is not always obvious how an individual's vote contributes to candidates' tallies across rounds of tabulation. This short paper presents a demonstration system that allows voters to enter an example vote in a past Australian STV election, and see: (i)~how that vote would have been transferred between candidates; and (ii)~how much that vote would have contributed to the tallies of relevant candidates, across rounds of tabulation.

Problem

• Explaining vote transfer in STV elections
• Visualizing individual vote contribution to candidates
• Clarifying complex Australian electoral counting process

Innovation

• Interactive system for STV vote visualization
• Shows vote transfer between candidates
• Quantifies vote contribution across tabulation rounds