I think the following will explain use of quota and why I think proxy voting is not necessary
also touches on five levels of an election, Hare versus Droop, uniform quota, and more
PR
--- old time explanation --
"In a democratic government the right of decision belongs to the majority but the right to representation belongs to all" first said by Ernest Naville in 1865 and repeated by many PR theorists since then
as proportionalists, we cannot pick and choose winners -- any party with the required amount of votes is worthy of representation.. of having a voice.
(more on operation of chamber below)
five levels of elections
A. the voter's single vote under FPTP or STV (voter's votes in Block voting or cumulative voting)
B. transfers (STV or IRV)
C. the district result
D. top-up if any (MMP)
E. make-up of chamber
E. make-up of chamber
each elected member has one vote
PR each party has due share of seats based on vote percentage (the more P the PR, the more fair - each party gets 1 seat per 1M votes or whatever)
under parliamentary system (in fact under any system in use today) parties do not have blocks of votes in the chamber - they have allegiance of certain number of members (as much as the party discipline is in effect or according to member's personal belief) and each member has one vote.
majority of members required to pass legislation (except Ford's new minority rule city legislation in use in Ontario)
(more on proxy voting and chamber behaviour below)
C. district result
FPTP is not P so if FPTP is used, PR must depend on top-up to make up fairness so invention of MMP
MMDs
where MMDs and fair voting used, each party takes its due share of seats in the district as achievable under limits of district magnitude
to win seat under STV, candidate must have quota (usually Droop) or sometimes have plurality at the end when the field of candidates thins to number of remaining open seats.
(either way the most-popular candidates take seats,
as each voter has one vote, no one voting block can take all the seats in the district
and as each succ. candidate takes seat with the same or about the same number of votes, each party takes its fair share of the seats in the district, and thus overall of the seats in the chamber.
under STV, in first count, candidates take varying number of votes, some with more than quota, some with less.
(same applies in all subsequent counts as well, but to lesser degree)
fair election results are achieved by surplus votes being transferred away from succ. cand.,
and by votes placed on un-electable cand. being transferred away.
a vote cannot be transferred unless it bears back-up preferences and then only if vote bears a usable back-up preference - vote is not transferred to a cand. already elected or eliminated.
(I am generalizing based on most common forms of STV in use today)
even if a vote bears back-up preference, it may - or may not ever - be transferred. it just depends on the choice of first-preference candidate (and somewhat on the choice of method of surplus vote transfer).
back-up preferences are contingency votes - they are only consulted if first preference cand. elected or eliminated.
Quota
quota determines those declared elected. (it is possible to be elected without quota)
every cand. with quota is elected.
when not all seats filled by quota, it is possible to be elected without quota (only at the end when the field of candidates thins to number of remaining open seats p;luralty is enough to be elected)
quota also used as measure to say how many votes held by succ. cand are surplus and thus eligible for transfer.
(there is a transferable-vote/MMD system that does not use quota - transfers continue until number of remaining cand. are same as DM (number of seats to be filled) but STV using quota fills seats quicker.)
Hare quota is larger than Droop so Hare hurts large parties who want to take multiple seats.
Why?
Hare in five-seat district, Hare quota is 20 percent. say a party with two cand. has 35 percent of the vote. candidate Terry takes 24 percent of the vote, leaving slate mate with 11 percent.
Terry sees 4 percent of votes transferred away. Assuming votes follow party lines, slate mate gets the transfer, then has 15 percent of the votes. Not enough to win seat right off. might take more votes through transfers or might take seat at end by plurality but no guarantees.
Droop
in five-seat district, Droop quota is 17 percent. say a party with two candidates has 35 percent of the vote. candidate Terry takes 24 percent of the vote and leaving slate mate with 11 percent.
Terry sees 7 percent of votes transfer away, slate mate gets them, has 18 percent of the votes. this is more than quota. it is enough to win seat right off.
party takes two seats
Droop, being smaller, also means any party running one candidate has better chance of taking a seat.
under Droop any party that takes 17 percent of the vote in the district takes a seat in the district.
(under Hare quota would be 20 percent)
taking that seat with quota is guaranteed - there is nothing the other voting blocks or other candidates or parties can do about it.
a candidate getting quota will take a seat.
B. transfers under STV
transfers are done in accordance with voter's next usable marked back-up preference.
they do not have to follow party lines.
(there is no rule that in above 5-seat district example, the "slate mate" will inherit all the transfers from Terry.)
cross-party transfers are actually important for fairness
- they allow votes to be used effectively to elect someone even if most-preferred candidate is of a small party that runs just one candidate and that candidate is un-electable,
and they allow vote to be transferred to where might be used when a party has its last remaining cand. elected or eliminated.
under STV, 80 to 90 percent, more or less, of votes cast are used to elect someone.
coupled with high voter turnout perhaps 80 percent, you might see 64 percent of eligible voters actually see their vote used to elect someone.
under FPTP about 64 percent of eligible voters vote and about half of those votrs cast used to elect someone.
(more on transfers below)
(D. top-up not discussed in this essay)
Proxy voting in the chamber
today as each member casts one vote, you can easily see the balance of power by comparing the government side of the leg to the opposition side.
if government has majority in the chamber, budget and legislaiton will be passed,
if not, govenrment is hamstrung or defeated.
proxy voting - each member has the votes they received in last election -
as different members show up each day or each hour to the legislature, the say 20M votes in play would have to be constantly re-calculated.
much easier to have each member elected by same number of votes as much as possible and each member have one vote.
This could be produced by STV, list PR or MMP.
STV or other district-level form of fair voting
each MMD having same number of members and each district having same number of eligible voters
and each winner having about same percentage of votes cast in the district
achieves something of the fairness produced by equal number of votes/member.
or the MMDs have variable number of seats
but in each district there is same ratio of eligible voters per seat in the district
and each winner has about same percentage of votes cast in the district
achieves something of the fairness produced by equal number of votes/member.
but voter turn-out and votes cast will vary from district to district and affect votes per seat ratio from election to election, so quota will vary from district to district without much control or consistency.
note the effect of using districts
any system using districts splits up voters
- no comparison of cand. in one district to cand. in other district.
but the fewer the districts, the larger the district, the more cand-to-cand comparisons can be made
and the more fair. the criterion for election.
Uniform quota (extreme fairness but at expense of district representation)
(presented for illustrative purposes, to show in extension what STV is intended to do compared to FPTP)
using uniform quota based on votes actually cast means even greater equality of votes per member than the present system where district magnitude is set irrespective of votes cast in the district
say in Canada in the "lower ten," provinces, the approx. 26M eligible voters/335 seats = 78,000 eligible voters per seat
still preserving constitutional guarantees to provinces
Ontario has pre-set 120 MPs (121?)
any candidate in any district with quota (78,000 votes) would be elected,
if that does not fill seats in a district in the first count (I suspect in every case it won't), votes transferred until as many seats are filled using the quota (78,000) as possible
eliminations (and elections by quota of course) would continue until only one candidate in each district remains. (if two remained, one of them could still achieve quota.)
then to fill any remaining open seats of the 120, the candidates across Ontario closest to quota would be declared elected to fill remaining open seats.
(sure, some variation from district to district in vote tallies held by succ. cand. elected by plurality but much less range than under FPTP)
such an uniform-quota STV system means a district is not guaranteed to take certain number of seats or any seats at all. (if less than 78,000 votes cast, if no cand in the district takes 78,000 votes, or if many exhausted votes, a district might not elect even one member).
like all district systems, votes do not cross district boundaries and do not cross province boundaries.
like all STV systems, parties and party lists play no part.
(same as all forms of STV, voter has liberty to mark back-up preferences just as he or she pleases.
In accordance with the marked preferences on the ballot paper, a vote might cross party lines)
some variance in vote tally per elected member across the lower ten, due to varying ratio of votes per seat due to votes divided by prov. seat counts (dictated by constitutional guarantees for provinces) and due to the range of vote counts held by winners winng by plurality in that portion of vote count.
but not at all as much as under FPTP where range is 6 to 1 or more in the "lower 10", provinces,
and range of ratio would be less than even under a STV system where each district has preset DM based on population or eligible voters but not votes cast.
recall the effect of using districts
-- any system using districts splits up voters
- no comparison of vote tallies of cand. in one district to cand. in other district.
but the fewer the districts, the larger the district, the more cand-to-cand comparisons can be made
and the more fair, the criterion for election.
STV with each district having preset DM
STV with each district having preset DM based on population or eligible voters is big improvement on present FPTP system (but not as much as unanimous quota system would be ).
FPTP's single-member districts split up voters into many, many arbitrary districts
- no comparison of cand in one district to cand. in others.
pop varies from district to district
eligible voters vary from district to district
vote turnout rate varies from district to district
votes cast vary from district to district
percentage of vote share taken by plurality winner varies from district to district
thus, vote tallies of winners vary widely from district to district
MMDs and fair voting narrow that variance even if each district has preset seat count.
fewer districts dividing electorate
same quota in district applied to all seats in the district,
plurality used at end to fill last one or two seats in a district but with fewer districts than FPTP, fewer seats filled by plurality than under FPTP.
quota means surplus votes transferred away (sometimes)
transfers mean votes cast for un-electable candidate can be transferred to where have at least another chance to be used effectively.
80 to 90 percent of votes cast in each district used effectively,
thus overall 80 to 90 percent of votes used effectively across the board.
but as shown, allowing comparison across a whole province (as under unanimous quota) would be more fair. than system where votes are trapped in discrete districts.
Out-of-district comparison
as shown, allowing comparison across a whole province (as under unanimous quota) would be more fair than usual form of STV.
(allowing a vote to pursue a party line across district boundaries (but still be constrained within the province), if shown on ballot to be desired by voter, would create more party proportionality - would reduce need for cross-party transfers - but would break with present district set-up of voting.
(under MMP, the wider basis of top-up breaks wth district set-up of voting, so idea of bypassing district boundaries is not totally out-there.)
Some remarks on Transfers
Transfers come in two types-
transfers of votes belonging to eliminated candidate is so simple it is usually not discussed but is more common form of transfer.
less common form of transfer is transfer of surplus votes of elected cand. Never happens more often than the DM, and usually fewer times than that.
Simple transfer method
one method is always used for transfer of votes belonging to eliminated cand. - just look at next usable back-up preference if any and move vote to that cand.
Surplus votes
choice of various methods can be prescribed for transfer of surplus votes.
random, "exact method" (used in ireland and Malta), Gregory method (various versions)
much on that in recent emails.
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Limited application of prescribed method of surplus transfer
whatever method used for transfer of surplus votes,
the precribed method will not be used in every case where a candidare is declared elected.
Not all the candidates elected by quota will have their surplus votes transferred -
for example, last seat filled means end to vote count process
(unless last transfer done just for sake of computer program - we see this in 2018 London ON IRV election)
Not all transfers of surplus votes that are done will use the prescribed transfer method for surplus votes
- if the number of transferable votes is less than surplus, simply use same simple method used for transfer of votes of eliminated cand.
fewer transferable votes than surplus was seen sometimes in Canada STV elections of olde
and likely in application of STV in other juritdictions (Irish Dail, Malta, Scottish local authorities) but not known how often happens there.
No matter the system prescribed for transfer of surplus votes, all or most of the cand in winning positions in the first count will go on to be elected.
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Concerning PR and STV, i am struck by these questions:
all a matter of choice -
who wants FPTP?
who wants random results?
who wants gerrymandering?
who wants to get popular support for PR?
what is easier to sell -
a STV system that only can be done with computers,
a simple system with potential for (slightly) different results,
open-list list PR with X voting?
the simple GM that is in use in UK for some elections (WIGM in others) does not have random-ness
but being based just on last parcel, simple GM may not reflect the back-up preferences of a successful candidate's supporters,
under simple GM, transfers done of surplus belonging to succ. cand who win other than in the first count never have the backup preferences of their first count supporters considered.
in reiterations of simple GM applied to same votes the same result is produced every time so no random-ness, but also no proven representation of will of all of that candidate's supporters.
I think i saw that in the referendums in BC STV, adherents were haunted by questioning of whether they meant fractional transfers as WGIM or simple GM entails or whole-vote transfers of the exact method.
certainly the models they presented did not involve fractional transfers
but certainly WIGM, the STV system on offer, does.
Hare versus Droop
in olde days, someone proposed using Hare quota instead of Droop because it was easier to explain.
true still today - i tried to explain Droop the other day to someone and his eyes rolled into his head and he begged off what he called such high math calculation -
and Hare STV, like all transfer methods, produces the same or almost the same result anyway as Droop does - all or almost all the candidates in winning positions in the first count are elected.
WIGM does require computers
i don't like idea of privately owned computers involved in our elections.
Comparison of vote count under exact method and WIGM
I look at vote count sheet for Cavan-Monaghan
Cavan–Monaghan: 2020 General Election Results, Counts, Transfers (irelandelection.com)
and I understand it.
I look at a probably-typical Scottish local authority contest
- Aberdeen - Terry Ferryhill
CandidateVotesPerStageReport_V0001_Torry-Ferryhill-Ward_06052022_154014.pdf (aberdeencity.gov.uk)
and see fractional votes down to five decimal points.
just look at stage 2!
Do WIGM supporters in Canada understand this is the level of complexity that WIGM will bring?
saying computers will do the work is no relief to me.
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