ICAI Election 2021 - Counting Venue - Southern Region

Election Update # 3

Address of the Counting Venue:

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India 

“ICAI Bhawan” 

122, Mahatma Gandhi Road 

Nungambakkam 

Chennai - 600034 

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Quota - Demystified

Election Update # 2

Single Transferable Vote (STV) systems primarily differ in how they transfer surplus votes and in the size of the quota. For this reason some have suggested that STV can be considered as a family of voting systems rather than a single system.

The quota, if used, must be set at a level where no more candidates can reach quota than there are seats to be filled. The quota is the minimum number of votes that ensures a candidate is elected. Any candidate that takes the quota is declared elected. It cannot be so small that more candidates can be elected than the number of open seats, but the smaller it is, the more fair is the result.

If fair results are to be produced and the number of candidates are pre-set, a quota must be set whereby any candidate that receives it is declared elected.

There are different quotas to choose from.

The Droop quota is the most commonly used quota. It is generally considered to be the absolute lowest number that elects the correct number of candidates to fill the available seats, at least based on the original number of votes cast.

The Droop quota is given by the floor function formula:

${\displaystyle {\text{votes needed to win}}=\operatorname {floor} \left({\frac {\text{valid votes cast}}{{\text{seats to fill}}+1}}\right)+1}$

The Droop quota is an extension of the majoritarian principle of requiring a 50% + 1 majority in single-winner elections under Instant-runoff Voting. 

Using Droop means 25% plus 1 is quota in a three-seat contest because no more than three people can each have 25% of the vote + 1; using Droop means 10% of the vote + 1 is quota in a nine-seat district because no more than nine people can each have 10% of the vote + 1, and so on.

Droop being relatively low means that the candidate with widest support, if he/she has majority of voters support, is likely to win the election.

Example: 

Total Votes Polled for the Regional and Central Council elections at Southern Region: 26,032 (42.64% of Total Votes - Other than Postal)

Postal Votes in Southern: 1,012

Considering the same %, net would be 431

Postal Votes from Abroad: 2,991

Generally Abroad Turnout may be around 25%, net would be 748

Assume all votes are valid, total votes for quota is 27,211

Quota for the Regional Council: (27,211/(13+1)) + 1 = 1,945

Quota for the Central Council: (27,211/(6+1)) + 1 = 3,888

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