[EM] Vote Management

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Olli,

you wrote (10 April 2003):
> Could you please give us an example how it works? As far as I
> understand STV this is impossible. As long as you vote in a solid
> block (having the candidates of your party above all other
> candidates) you get the seats you are going to get. It's a different
> thing if the supporters of the other parties vote in a less
> disciplined way.
>
> If you average the votes, your candidates may reach the quota without
> many transfers. If you don't, the votes will just get transferred
> until all the candidates you can elect have reached the quota. If you
> don't cast secondary preferences you can't help other candidates of
> your party and they may be unsuccessful. If you cast preferences only
> for the candidates you expect to elect, your opponents may be elected
> with less than the quota, which is not serious, you've only decided
> not to have an influence in the order they are elected.

In an STV count, a candidate can win additional votes only as long
as he is neither elected nor eliminated. Therefore, when a given
party wants to win as many votes as possible during the STV count,
this party has to take care that its candidates are as long as
possible neither elected nor eliminated. The party achieves this
by "averaging" the first preferences over its candidates so that
each candidate is just below the Droop Quota.

Markus Schulze