referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of ...

electoral reform Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results. That can include reforms of: * Voting systems, such as proportional representation, a two-round system (runoff voting), instant-ru ...

was held on 10 October 2018 in Guernsey to determine an electoral system for elections to the

States of Guernsey The States of Guernsey (french: États de Guernesey), sometimes referred to as the Government of Guernsey, is the parliament and government of the British Crown dependency of Guernsey. Some laws and ordinances approved by the States of Guer ...

.Referendum on Guernsey's Electoral System
Government of Guernsey Voters were asked to rank five different proposed

electoral system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections m ...

s, with a run-off system used to determine the winning proposal. Option A, a 38-member constituency covering the whole island, won the vote. As a result of

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Univ ...

(45%) being above the 40% vote threshold, the referendum was binding.

Vote counting system

The referendum itself used

instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the U ...

, also called the alternative vote. In the initial count, only first choices were counted. As no proposal received a majority of the vote, the proposal that received the fewest votes was eliminated; any ballots with this proposal as first choice were redistributed to the other options according to the second preference. This process was repeated until a proposal had a majority of the votes. A quorum of 40% voter turnout was required for the result to be binding, following a promise by the States.

Electoral system proposals

Voters were presented with five options for a new electoral systemThe five options in the Referendum
Government of Guernsey Aspects of the pre-existing electoral system preserved by all five options were fixed-term elections and

plurality block voting Plurality block voting, also known as plurality-at-large voting, block vote or block voting (BV) is a non-proportional voting system for electing representatives in multi-winner elections. Each voter may cast as many votes as the number of sea ...

, in which each voter can vote for as many candidates as there are seats in the constituency. All but one option preserved the practice of holding a

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

every four years. *Option A: One 38-member constituency covering the whole island. Deputies would serve four-year terms. *Option B: Seven constituencies with five or six seats. Deputies would serve four-year terms. *Option C: Seven district constituencies with three, four or five seats, and one 10-member constituency covering the whole island; voters would vote in one district constituency and also the whole-island constituency. Deputies would serve four-year terms. *Option D: Four constituencies with 9, 10 or 11 seats. Deputies would serve four-year terms. *Option E: A single island-wide 38-member constituency with one-third of the members (12 or 13) elected every two years for a six-year term.

Results

References

External links

* {{Guernsey elections Referendums in Guernsey Electoral system referendum Guernsey Multiple-choice referendums