The Droop quota is the quota most commonly used in elections held under the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. It is also sometimes used in elections held under the largest remainder method of party-list proportional representation (list PR). In an STV election the quota is the minimum number of votes a candidate must receive in order to be elected. Any votes a candidate receives above the quota are transferred to another candidate. The Droop quota was devised in 1868 by the English lawyer and mathematician Henry Richmond Droop (1831–1884) as a replacement for the earlier Hare quota.
Today the Droop quota is used in almost all STV elections, including the forms of STV used in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta and Australia, among other places. The Droop quota is very similar to the simpler Hagenbach-Bischoff quota, which is also sometimes loosely referred to as the 'Droop quota'.
Read more about Droop Quota: Formula, An Example, Comparison With The Hare Quota, Comparison With Hagenbach-Bischoff Quota, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words droop and/or quota:
“And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)