this could give some truely bizarre results: for example, it would be possible to be elected having got no #1 votes at all!
In practice, it's hard to imagine any candidate getting no first preferences at all - surely they'd at least vote for themselves!
This is theoretically possible under the present system, although highly unlikely. At it's simplest, suppose you have two candidates, A & B. A gets more than two quotas on the first count and is elected. B gets no first preference votes at all. Then when A's surplus is transferred it all goes to B, who is thereby elected on the second count.
Of course, B's quota could equally well be built up from a number of surpluses and/or eliminations, instead of in one fell swoop.
In practice, it's hard to imagine any candidate getting no first preferences at all - surely they'd at least vote for themselves!
Say I vote Tom Kitt No.1 and Maria Corrigan No.2. You vote Tom Kitt No.1 and leave it at that.
The quota is 10,000 and Kitt wins 13,000 on the first count.
My vote could be put in the 10,000, could go into the surplus to be redistributed...who knows. So could yours.
What they should be doing is counting all the votes like yours with just a No.1 preference, seeing how many there are, then seeing how many can be transferred.
go ask the tallyman!
Yet another reason for not going to electronic voting....
Electronic voting is a classic example of a solution searching for a problem. It creates vastly more problems than it solves and since it only gets used once every four or five years, the costs are way out of proportion to any benefits, which are in any case more perceived than real.
For legal reasons, the pilot e-voting system retained the randomness from the current counting system, so it didn't even have that (perceived) advantage.
Even the ACM, an 80,000 strong professional grouping of computer scientists, issued a directive outlining their opposition to e-voting with no paper trail.
In the current election we've actually seen the closest we're likely to get to the above scenario in real life.
Cyprian Brady (brother of the infamous ex-Lord Mayor of Dublin and failed European Parliament candidate, Royston) got 939 first preference votes, and was elected on transfers from Bertie Ahern.
Pundits on RTÉ Radio last night said they could not remember a candidate ever having been elected to the Dáil with fewer than a thousand first preferences and Mr Brady appears to have set a record in this regard.
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