A Parable on ICAI Election System of Proportional Representation

A Parable on ICAI Election System of Proportional Representation

(By means of Single Transferable Vote)

Whether Corporates in India explore the option of section 265 of the companies act, for proportional representation in Board or not, ICAI for the past 20 elections to central council and 21 elections to the regional councils has left and right explored the system of proportional representation to the periphery.

The starting point is Rule 19 of the Chartered Accountants (Election to the Council) Rules, 2006, where the Mode of Election for ICAI is prescribed.

• The System: Rule 19(1): The election must be held in accordance with the System of Proportional Representation by means of a Single Transferable Vote. (STV). This system has seen 20+ ICAI Elections in the past 60+ years history of ICAI
• The diffident Condition: Rule 19(2): Vote to be cast by secret ballot only and every voter in any election should cast his vote personally in the booth. This condition in this hyper-techno age is highly debatable.
• The Exception: Rule 19(3): The recording of votes through voting machines or internet – If determined by ICAI Council and approved by the Central Government. Its more than six years since the rule is made. I doubt will ever the 4 and 5 digit membership number members will vote electronically.

What is STV: 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. The system minimizes "wasted" votes, provides approximately proportional representation, and enables votes to be explicitly cast for individual candidates. It achieves this by using multi-seat region (7 Central and 14 Regional for Southern Region) and by transferring votes to other eligible candidates that would otherwise be wasted on sure losers or sure winners.

150 year 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.

Who: Although he was not the first to propose a system of transferable votes, the English barrister Thomas Hare is generally credited with the beginning of STV, and he may have independently developed the idea in 1857. Hare's view was that STV should be a means of "making the exercise of the suffrage a step in the elevation of the individual character, whether it is found in the majority or the minority." In Hare's original STV system, he further proposed that electors should have the opportunity of discovering which candidate their vote had ultimately counted for, to improve their personal connection with voting. This is unnecessary in modern STV elections, however, as an individual voter can discover how their vote was ultimately distributed by viewing detailed election results.

The Legendary Quota: The quota (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. When Thomas Hare originally conceived his version of Single Transferable Vote, he envisioned using the quota as: [Votes Polled / seats]

The Hare Quota

H2D: 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. There is probability the last candidate cannot meet the quota, and it may be fairer to eliminate that candidate.

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

Droop quota: ICAI Method: (Rule 35, Schedule 8: Procedure for Counting of Votes and declaration of results)

The ICAI quota formula is the Droop quota which given as: [Votes polled / (seats + 1)] + 1

The Droop Quota

Droop produces a lower quota than Hare. If each ballot paper 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.

Counting Single Transferable Votes

The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system based on proportional representation and ranked voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most-preferred candidate. After candidates have been either elected (winners) by reaching quota or eliminated (losers), surplus votes are transferred from winners to remaining candidates (hopefuls) according to the surplus ballots' ordered preferences.

The system minimizes "wasted" votes, provides approximately proportional representation, and enables votes to be explicitly cast for individual candidates rather than for closed party lists. A variety of algorithms (methods) carry out these transfers.

Counting rules

Under the single transferable vote system, votes are successively transferred to hopefuls from two sources:

·         Surplus votes (i.e. those in excess of the quota) of successful candidates

·         All votes of eliminated candidates.

The possible algorithms for doing this differ in detail, e.g., in the order of the steps. There is no general agreement on which is best, and the choice of exact method may affect the outcome.

1.    Compute the quota.

2.    Assign votes to candidates by first preferences.

3.    Declare as winners all candidates who received at least the quota.

4.    Transfer the excess votes from winners to hopefuls.

5.    Repeat step 2 to step 4 until new candidates are elected. (Caution: Under some systems, votes could be transferred in this step to earlier winners or losers. This might affect the outcome.)

If all seats have winners, the process is complete. Otherwise:

6.    Eliminate one or more candidates. Typically either the lowest candidate or all candidates whose combined votes are less than the vote of the lowest remaining candidate.

7.    Transfer the votes of the losers to continuing candidates are declared to be losers.

8.    Repeat step 2 to step 7 until all seats are full.