[EM] Not logical electoral system?

[Olli Salmi]

With good will this looks like d'Hondt's method. You divide each party's
vote successively by 1,2,3,..7. But the "common divisor" cannot be the 28th
quotient, it must be the 7th one in descending order. If you divide each
party's vote with this number and truncate the number, the result gives the
number of seats for the party. Unfortunately your example is somewhat
problematic because there's a tie.

It's easiest to try this with a spreadsheet. (My settings have a decimal
comma.)

	A	B	C	D
1	600	500	400	300
2	300	250	200	150
3	200	166,67	133,33	100
4	150	125	100	75
5	120	100	80	60
6	100	83,33	66,67	50
7	85,71	71,49	57,14	42,86

The 7th quotient is 200. The problem is that the 8th quotient is also 200.
Both A and C are equally entitled to the 7th seat. You have to have some
means to resolve the tie. In this country we use the lot.

If you divide the votes of the parties with 200 and drop the fractional
part, you get A: 3, B: 2, C: 2 and D: 1, which would show the number of
seats for each party if it wasn't for the tie.

According to Finnish law, we just count as many topmost quotients as are
needed. The extra division is unnecessary and it's easier to see which
parties tie for a seat.

Olli Salmi


 At 17:19 +0200 30.1.2002, Jurij Toplak wrote:
>Art. 23.
>
>Members of the representative body are elected by proportional system with
>party lists. The whole community is one electoral district.
>
>"The number of representative body members, which will be elected from each
>party list is determined in the way that total number of the valid votes,
>received from a certain party list (voting mass of the list) is divided with
>numbers from 1 to the number of the members, which are to be elected in the
>district. Out of all the results of these computations, the last one is
>"common divisor". Total number of the votes of each party list (voting mass
>of the list) is then divided with this common divisor. As many times as
>common divisor is included in the total number of the party list votes
>(voting mass), that many seats the party list receives."
>
>Art. 24.
>
>Among the candidates on the party list, the candidates seated on the top of
>the list are elected.
>
>
>
>I dont get the Art. 23. Imagine that there are four parties. A - 600 votes,
>B - 500, C - 400, D - 300. Imagine that 7 members have to be elected. What
>next? I give the prize to the person who gives me the answer!