RateItAll: The Opinion Network

This has its place but it is almost unknown in the USA and Canada. I know that Cincinnati used it about 60 years ago to elect its city council and some other units of local government used it.

The system depends upon a district that usually elects three or more members. The voter is instructed to vote by listing his numical choices.
For instance, lets say we have district in which ten candidates are seeking election. You would vote your first choice with a "1," second "2," third "3" until you have voted for all with the last candidate given a "10."

Let's assume in our district with ten candidates, we have four seats to be filled by election and we have six parties fielding candidates.

Let's assume that 100,000 votes were cast. You would then total up all the first place choices and that way allocate the seats.

In order to fill the seats, however, you must establish how many votes it takes to win. That is easy to establish. You take the total number of seats to be elected, add one, divide that total into the total number of votes and then add one.

In our case, we have 4 seats to be elected with 100,000 votes cast. We would take four, add one equals five and divide five into 100,000. That would be twenty thousand. We add one and we get the quota of 20,001 votes.

Now if you take 20,001 times five, you get 100,005 votes, which is more than the total votes cast, so only four can be elected under the quota. Ingenious!

Remember we had six parties and ten candidates.

Fine Gael fielded two candidates and they received these first place votes:

Adams 24000 (more than quota, has suplus)
Baker 5000

Fianna Fail fielded two candidates:

Charles 21000 (more than quota, has suplus)
Dixon 5000

Republicans fielded two candidates:

Edwards 15000
Finnegan 5000

Democrats fielded two candidates

Gordon 10000
Hays 5000

Conservatives fielded one candidate:

Igoe 6000

Liberals fielded one candidate;

Kelly. 4000

That is a total of 100,000 votes. We see that Adams of Fine Gael and Charles of Fianna Fail both exceed the quota and are declared elected.

We then determine the suplus votes from each winning candidate and distribute them to their second place choices. We look at Adams' second place choices and since they all put Baker second, we give Baker 3999 bringing her total to 8999. We look at Charles' second place voters and we discover that her 999 suplus voters all listed Dixon as the second choice bringing his total to 5999. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have already elected one member and two more remain to be elected, however no candidate has 20001 votes.

We now have totals as follows in the still contending candidates after the Second Count:

Baker 8999 Fine Gael
Dixon 5999 Fianna Fail
Edwards 15000 Republican
Finnegan 5000 Republican
Gordon 10000 Democrat
Hays 5000 Democrat
Igoe 6000 Conservative
Kelly 4000. Liberal


For the Third Count we eliminate the low candidate who is Kelly with 4000. We look at his second place choices and discover that all go to Gordon which bumps him up to 15000.

We continue in this vein until another candidate reaches 20001 and finally the last candidate hits the quota. I would predict that Gordon and Edwards will be elected looking at the distribution. Thus four parties have each won one seat.