You’ve voted - good stuff! Now, let’s move on to the results.
We use a special formula to work out the ‘quota’. The quota is the number of votes that a candidate must get to guarantee that they are elected. This makes the election fair and it means that few votes are wasted.
To work out the quota we divide the total number of valid votes by two and then we add one.
Let’s imagine the number of valid votes cast is 4,000 for Students’ Union President. We then divide that by two, and then we add one. This means that the quota is 2,001.
So, we count the votes.
After the first count the results look something like this:
Students' Union President |
|
Candidate A |
1500 |
Candidate B |
1300 |
Candidate C |
815 |
RON (Reopen Nominations) |
385 |
The Candidate with the lowest amount of votes is eliminated. In this case, it’s RON. Bye, RON!
So RON’s votes are redistributed. This means that, for anyone who gave RON their ‘Number 1’ and Candidate A their ‘Number 2’, these votes aren’t wasted. Instead, their votes are transferred to Candidate A.
So, on the second count the table looks like this:
Students' Union President |
|
Candidate A |
1685 |
Candidate B |
1350 |
Candidate C |
915 |
The Candidate with the lowest amount of votes is eliminated. This time it is Candidate C. So we then count again and distribute Candidate C’s votes.
So, on the third count the table looks like this:
Students' Union President |
|
Candidate A |
2185 |
Candidate B |
1500 |
You can see that Candidate A has reached the quota (which was 2,001). So Candidate A is elected on the third count. Whoop whoop!