""At least under the present system the votes are counted by real people"

As opposed to AV where it's done by Martian centipedes, I imagine."

The Student Union I was in used the hare clark voting system - google it - there's lots of hits... I actually counted the votes of the Council Elections to fill various Committee positions.

Very Difficult - One, Two, Three... etc

Now that pile is now a Quota, so now put that aside, cause he;s elected, and now we take this pile and count it and add them to that pile...

Basically, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

QUOTE
The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system based on proportional representation and preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or unused votes are transferred according to the voter's stated preferences. The system minimizes "wasted" votes, provides approximately proportional representation, and enables votes to be explicitly cast for individual candidates rather than for closed party lists. It achieves this by using multi-seat constituencies (voting districts) and by transferring votes to other eligible candidates that would otherwise be wasted on sure losers or winners.

A modified version of STV, known as the Hare-Clark system, is used in Australia in lower house elections in two states/territories: Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. The name is derived from Thomas Hare, who initially developed the system and the Tasmanian Attorney General, Andrew Inglis Clark, who worked to have a modified version introduced. Hare-Clark has been subsequently modified to introduce improvements, such as rotating ballot papers (the Robson Rotation). The Upper Houses of the remaining Australian states[Qld abolished theirs], as well as the Upper House of the Parliament of Australia, use conventional STV.

STV is the system of choice of groups such as the Proportional Representation Society of Australia and the Electoral Reform Society in the United Kingdom. Its critics contend that some specialists and voters find the mechanisms behind STV difficult to understand,[1] but this does not make it more difficult for voters to 'rank the list of candidates in order of preference' in an STV ballot paper (see 'Voting' below).
UNQUOTE

Just keep reading that page, it's not as complex as it looks, once you have played with it once.