Queen Lion of the Animal Kingdom is displeased.

She recently introduced elections for the Office of King using the First Pass-Post voting system.

While her rem started out as a healthy democracy with many parties running candidates for King,

it quickly devolved into two-party rule, with a citizens not liking either one, but trapped within the system because of a problem called the spoiler effect.

However, one of Queen Line subjects from a distant land, Wallaby, has a solution, the alternative vote.

What's the difference? To find out, let's follow one voter on election day, Red Squirrel, under both systems.

There are five candidates running for King, two members of the big parties, Gorilla and Leopard,

and three other candidates, Turtle, Owl, and Tiger. Under first past the post, Red Squirrel gets a ballot where he picks just one

candidate. Red Squirrel really likes Turtle and even campaign for him. However, he knows that

his new neighbor, Gray Squirrel, is voting gorilla. And what, starts to wonder, Red Squirrel, about all

the other animals? Who are they going to vote for? The debates on the Animal News network only had the big parties, so Red Squirrel thinks it's

going to be a close race between Gorilla and Leopard. While he's indifferent toward

gorilla, he's deathly afraid of Leopard. Because he can only pick a single candidate, he gives

his one vote to Gorilla in hopes of preventing Leopard from becoming king. This is strategic voting,

and it's a necessity under First Pass the Post. But now let's look at the alternative vote,

which Wallaby explains to Red Squirrel. Instead of picking one and only one candidate, he can rank

him in order of his most favorite to his least. He goes into the voting booth and gets the same

ballot as before, but now puts Turtle as his first choice, owl as his second, and Gorilla as his third. He dislikes Leopard and Tiger equally, so he stops filling in his ballot and drops it in the box. At this point, Red Squirrel doesn't care exactly what happens. He has other things on his mind and he heads off. But you, dear citizen, want to know how the votes are counted, so here goes.

Turtle, beloved though he is with some of the citizenry, comes in last place with only 5%

and he is eliminated from the race.

Because the voters ranked their candidates in order, we can know what would have happened if Turtle didn't run.

Without Turtle, voters like Red Squirrel would have picked Owl instead, so their votes are transferred to her,

...