Apportionment methods

H.F. Niemeyer; Alice Niemeyer

doi:10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2008.03.003

Apportionment methods

H.F. Niemeyer, Alice Niemeyer

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Most democratic countries use apportionment methods to transform election results into whole numbers, which usually give the number of seats in a legislative body that the parties obtained. Which apportionment method does this best can be specified by measuring the error between the allocated result and the ideal proportion. We show how to find an apportionment method which is best suited to a given error function. We also discuss several properties of apportionment methods that have been labelled paradoxa. In particular we explain the highly publicised “Alabama” Paradox for the Hare/Hamilton method and show that other popular apportionment methods come with their very own paradoxa.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	240-253
Journal	Mathematical Social Sciences
Volume	56
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2008.03.003
Publication status	Published - 2008

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10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2008.03.003

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title = "Apportionment methods",

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AU - Niemeyer, Alice

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AB - Most democratic countries use apportionment methods to transform election results into whole numbers, which usually give the number of seats in a legislative body that the parties obtained. Which apportionment method does this best can be specified by measuring the error between the allocated result and the ideal proportion. We show how to find an apportionment method which is best suited to a given error function. We also discuss several properties of apportionment methods that have been labelled paradoxa. In particular we explain the highly publicised “Alabama” Paradox for the Hare/Hamilton method and show that other popular apportionment methods come with their very own paradoxa.

U2 - 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2008.03.003

DO - 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2008.03.003

M3 - Article

SN - 0165-4896

VL - 56

SP - 240

EP - 253

JO - Mathematical Social Sciences

JF - Mathematical Social Sciences

IS - 2

ER -

Apportionment methods

Abstract

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