Revision $Id: README.txt 578 2009-08-26 01:13:50Z jeff.oneill $ OVERVIEW OpenSTV is a program for implementing the single transferable vote (STV). STV is used for electing a group of people (e.g. council, committee, legislature) and it provides for proportional representation of the electorate. The idea behind proportional representation is that the demographics of the elected group should, at least roughly, match the demographics of the electorate. The beauty of STV is that there are no reserved seats and the proportional representation arises naturally. For more information see http://www.fairvote.org/ http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/ In an STV election, each voter simply ranks the candidates in order of preference. The rules for counting the votes with STV are more complicated than winner-take-all elections. The votes can be counted by hand, but it is useful to have a computer program to speed up the process. There are several variations of STV, but most users should use the default options. INSTALLATION See http://www.OpenSTV.org/ for more information. Jeff O'Neill jeff.oneill at openstv.org