[EM] 01/17/03 - No Problem, Olli:

[Donald Davison]

01/17/03 - No Problem, Olli:

Greetings Olli and list members,

Olli, you wrote: "I can see nothing that could be excluded."

Donald here:  Then I shall explain for you that which `could be excluded'.
In your example of three seats and three candidates with one-third each,
that which is excluded are the votes between the Droop quota and the
one-third, so called surplus held by each of the three candidates.  The
Droop method demands that surplus votes be transferred, but none of the
three are able to accept any votes because they are already over the limit
of the Droop quota.  We cannot say the votes become exhausted because the
voters may have made enough lower choices.  The problem is that there is
not enough room in the quotas of the three candidates to accept additional
votes, therefore the votes are said to be excluded.

Olli: "It's unnecessary to do the math because A, B and C reach the quota.
You can declare the result and have a coffee or whatever."

Donald:  It is necessary to do the math because, like I've said to James,
`The job is not over until the paperwork is done.'  Doing the math is
normal for every election method, so it should also be normal for the Droop
method of STV.  Besides, the final math will tell us how representative
these candidates will end up being.  They started at one-third each,
perfect representation, but the Droop method reduced them down to only
one-quarter each, something wrong about that Droop guy.

Olli: "What do you propose to do if you use the Hare quota and there are
four rather equal candidates vying for three seats: 25.1% A,  25.!% B,
25.1% C,  24.7% D.[?]

Donald:  No problem!  In your example, candidate D is the lowest, so I
would eliminate candidate D and transfer his votes.  Depending on the lower
choices we could end up with the following results:  33% A   32% B  31% C
which would be very good results, very representative of the public, the
Droop method would never be able to have results as good as that.






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