[EM] 01/21/03 - Re: Wasted votes and quotas:

[Donald Davison]

01/21/03 - Re: Wasted votes and quotas:

Greetings Doug and list members,

Doug, you wrote: "The definition of "wasted" that I had in mind when I was
writing my
piece on quotas was the votes that remained with the runner-up after
all seats in an election had been filled."  (Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003)

Donald here,  I understood perfectly what you were saying, you were clear.
Those are `wasted' votes.

Doug: "My reason for asking about the Meek counting method is that it
seemed to provide a method by which you could start with a Hare quota and
then reduce it using Meek ending up with all elected candidates elected
with an equal quota that utilised the maximum of
votes."

Donald:  You are correct, but a very good way to avoid the conflict of Hare
vs Droop is to not have any quota.  If no quota, then no surplus votes.  If
no surplus votes, then no fractional transfer of any surplus votes.  If no
fractional transfers, then no secondary fractional transfers of fractional
`paper'.

Wow!  Look at all the math we will be avoiding.

This is possible with your plan because you will be using the new
elimination rule.  If you think about it, you should come to the
realization that all the votes above average will be transferred
automatically by the new elimination rule anyway.  Having a quota would be
moot.

If we were to do this, STV becomes moot.

The method is a variant of Bottoms Up aka Alternative Vote for Multi-Seat
elections.  I call this variant `Davison-Bottoms Up'.








----
For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), 
please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em