Filling a Vacancy on a council

[New Democracy]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - March 01 1997
Dear List members,

     I have been testing different means of filling a vacancy in a
multi-seat body using Preference Voting and the Cambridge Ballots. I have
come to the conclusion that the best way to fill a vacancy is to go back
and work the ballots from the last election - but with a change.

     First we should ask the losing candidates from the last election if
they are available. Next we drop the now vacant candidate and any
candidates that are not available and transfer all their votes to the next
lower preference on each ballot. The third thing to do is the same as usual
- we transfer any excess votes over a share that any candidate may have -
the lowest excess is transferred first. After all excess votes have been
transferred we now start dropping the lowest candidate - this is where the
change comes in - we now have a rule to follow - I call it the Sitting
Member Rule.

    The rule is that the sitting members of the current body are not to be
dropped. This rule is important because we want to end up with the current
sitting members plus one new member to fill the vacancy. It is not our
intent to disrupt the current council by changing a few other members -
this is not a recall effort - it is only an effort to fill a vacancy.

     Everybody must realize that when we remove one or more candidates and
transfer their votes, it is not the same election data - it is a new
ballgame. It is the same as a new election as far as the numbers are
concerned. We cannot be sure that the same sitting members will be elected
this time - hence the rule.

     Another option I tested was to consider only the ballots of the now
vacant candidate. The thinking here is that these voters elected the vacant
candidate let them elect the new candidate to fill the vacancy - it does
not work out that way.

     If all these ballots had the same candidate as the next lower
preference and that candidate was not one of the sitting candidates then I
would say fine - this next candidate will fill the vacancy - but that will
not be the case. I found in my test that about thirty percent of these
ballots had only preferences of candidates that were already elected. The
rest of the ballots were spread out over several candidates. It was
impossible to end up with a number close to a share for this new candidate
- even when I added in the exhausted ballots. The first solution will give
us a full share of votes for the new member.

This is letter Four in a series dealing with the Cambridge Ballots.

Yours,

Donald Eric Davison of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald

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