Mixed ballot transferable vote

Okay kiddo, have you ever played a game where you have to vote for your favorite toy or game? And there are many toys and games to choose from, but you can only pick one as your favorite. That's kind of like an election!

So, when there is an election, people vote for their favorite candidate who they think will be the best leader for their town, city, or even a whole country. Sometimes, there are lots of candidates to choose from, and people might get confused about who to vote for.

That's where the Mixed Ballot Transferable Vote (MBTV) comes in. It's like having a bunch of toy options, but instead of only being able to choose one, you can rank them in the order you like them best. So, if you pick a toy for number one on your list, and that toy doesn't have enough votes to win, then your vote can be transferred to your second choice toy.

With MBTV, voters are given a ballot to write down their top choices, so instead of just voting for one person, they rank the candidates in order from their most preferred to their least preferred.

Then, when the votes are counted up, if no candidate has a clear majority, which means more than 50% of the votes, the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated. But, instead of that candidate's votes being wasted, they are transferred to the voters' next choice candidate.

This process of eliminating the candidate with the least amount of votes and transferring their votes continues until one candidate has more than 50% of the votes.

So, MBTV helps voters have more say in the election because they can rank their preferences instead of just picking one candidate. And it also helps ensure that the winner has a majority of the votes, which means they are more likely to represent what most people want.