Droop quota
Number of votes for the assignment of a seat in electoral systems / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In the study of electoral systems, the Droop quota (sometimes called the Hagenbach-Bischoff or Newland-Britton quota[lower-alpha 1]) is the minimum number of votes needed for a candidate to be elected under STV systems used today. It is the preferred quota, being known to be less likely than the Hare quota, to give majority of seats to a minority party.[1] It is the smallest portion of votes that elects the correct number of members to fill the seats, but no more than that number.
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Droop quota is the number obtained by dividing the total number of valid votes cast in a district by a number that is one more than the number of places to be filled (members to be elected) and increasing the result to the next whole number.
With each successful candidate having a vote tally equal to the quota, each party will receive its due share of seats, as much as the number of seats in the district can allow anyway. (Of course in STV elections, in odd exceptions candidates will be elected with more or less than quota.)
The Droop quota generalizes the concept of a majority to multiple-winner elections: just as a majority (more than half of votes) guarantees a candidate can be declared the winner of a one-on-one election, having more than one Droop quota's worth of votes measures the number of votes a candidate needs to be guaranteed victory in a multiwinner election.
Besides establishing winners, the Droop quota is used to define the number of excess votes, votes not needed by a candidate who has been declared elected. In proportional quota-rule systems such as STV and CPO-STV, these excess votes are transferred to other candidates, preventing them from being wasted.
The Droop quota was first devised by the English lawyer and mathematician Henry Richmond Droop (1831–1884), as a replacement for the Hare quota.
Today the Droop quota is used in almost all STV elections, including those in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta, and Australia.[citation needed] It is also used in South Africa to allocate seats by the largest remainder method.[citation needed]