ICSI Quota - The Ceiling - Demystified

Quota

The quota (sometimes called the threshold) is the number of votes a candidate must receive to be elected. The Hare quota and the Droop quota are commonly used to determine the quota.

HARE Quota:

When Thomas Hare originally conceived his version of Single Transferable Vote, he envisioned using the quota:

Quota =	Votes polled
	Available Seats

In the unlikely event that each successful candidate receives exactly the same number of votes not enough candidates can meet the quota and fill the available seats in one count. Thus the last candidate cannot not meet the quota, and it may be fairer to eliminate that candidate. 

To avoid this situation, it is common instead to use the Droop quota, which is always lower than the Hare quota.

DROOP quota: (ICSI  Method)

The most common quota formula is the Droop quota which given as: 

Quota =	(Votes polled)	+ 1
	(Available Seats + 1)

Droop produces a lower quota than Hare. If each ballot has a full list of preferences, Droop guarantees that every winner meets the quota rather than being elected as the last remaining candidate after lower candidates are eliminated. The fractional part of the resulting number, if any, is dropped (the result is rounded down to the next whole number.)

It is only necessary to allocate enough votes to ensure that no other candidate still in contention could win. This leaves nearly one quota's worth of votes unallocated, but counting these would not alter the outcome.

Droop is the only whole-number threshold for which 

(a) a majority of the voters can be guaranteed to elect a majority of the seats when there is an odd number of seats; 

(b) for a fixed number of seats.

Each winner's surplus votes transfer to other candidates according to their remaining preferences. 

Single Transferable Vote

Single Transferable Vote

What: The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through ranked voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or unused votes are transferred according to the voter's stated preferences. 

Why: The system minimizes "wasted" votes, provides approximately proportional representation, and enables votes to be explicitly cast for individual candidates rather than for closed syndicate of contestants. 

How: It achieves this by using multi-seat constituencies (different regions) and by transferring votes to other eligible candidates that would otherwise be wasted on sure losers or sure winners.

Andrew Inglis Clark

ICSI Elections: A modified version of STV, known as the Hare–Clark system, is used in ICSI elections. The name is derived from Thomas Hare, who initially developed the system and the Tasmanian Attorney General, Andrew Inglis Clark, who worked to have a modified version introduced. Its critics contend that some voters find the mechanisms behind STV difficult to understand, but this does not make it more difficult for voters to 'rank the list of candidates in order of preference' in an STV ballot paper.

Thomas Hare

History of STV: The concept of transferable voting was first proposed by Thomas Wright Hill in 1821. The system remained unused in real elections until 1855, when Carl Andræ proposed a transferable vote system for elections in Denmark. Andræ's system was used in 1856 to elect the Danish Rigsraad, and by 1866 it was also adapted for indirect elections to the second chamber, the Landsting, until 1915.

Candidates - Central Council - Southern Region

S.No	Name	M.No	City
1	Ahalada Rao V	5019	Hyderabad
2	Ramasubramaniam C	6125	Chennai
3	Diraviam S	4463	Chennai
4	Hegde Gopalakrishna	6153	Bangalore
5	Jagannatham Puttaparthi	4500	Hyderabad
6	Marthi Soma Sekhar	1989	Hyderabad
7	Ramasamy K	6859	Chennai
8	Seetaramayya B C	1501	Secunderabad

Candidates - Regional Council - Southern Region

S.No	Name	M.No	Age	City
1	Damodaran M	5837	39	Chennai
2	Dhanapal S	6881	39	Chennai
3	Ganapathi G M	5659	44	Bangalore
4	Kannan R	6718	55	Chennai
5	Kumararajan S	3562	65	Madurai
6	Mohan Kumar A	4347	44	Chennai
7	Ramakrishna Gupta Racharla	5523	39	Hyderabad
8	Rao Nagendra D	5553	42	Bangalore
9	Sankararamann V K	5592	47	Chennai
10	Shastry P S	4454	57	Hyderabad
11	Sivakumar P	3050	54	Kochi
12	Subash V S	3907	55	Coimbatore