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
