So far, I believe you are all incorect.
Regarding transfers it is done as follows:
Lets imagine that the quota for the
uibhfhaili.com council elections is 300.
Plain of the Herbs, having mobilised all of Lusmagh, romps home with 400 votes. He is deemed elected and surplus of 100 is redistributed.
The remainder of the candidates, following the first count, scored as follows:
Lone Shark: 200
Bord na Mona Man: 150
GreatDayForTheParish: 100
Now for the distribution of surplus. This is the important bit:
ALL of Plain of the Herbs 400 first preference votes are recounted and
ALL of his second preferences noted. For example lets say that of these 400 votes, 260 second preferences went to the Lone Shark, 100 to Bord na Mona Man and 40 to GreatDayForTheParish. Plain of the Herbs surplus was 100 ,exactly a quarter of his total vote which was 400. This ratio, a quarter or 25%, is then applied to the disrtibution of the surplus.
Thus in working out the values for the second counts the
Lone Shark would receive 25% of 260, in other words 60 votes.
Bord na Mona Man would recieve 25% of 100, or 25 votes.
And finally
GreatDayForTheParish would receive 25% of 40, or 10 votes.
The second count would thus finish as follows:
Lone Shark: 200+60=260
Bord na Mona Man: 150+25=175
GreatDayForTheParish: 100+10=110.
I hope that has been explained somewhat clearly. The key thing is that random votes are
NOT just taken off bundles and deemed all of a sudden to be the surplus. Each remaining candidate instead receives the correct ratio of votes they are entitled to based on
ALL of the elected (or eliminated) candidates votes.
For those who are interested and who perhaps thought the above explanation was rubbish, a very good description of the whole process can be found at
http://www.rte.ie/news/elections/prstv.html
If any of the above is wrong I am open to corrections.
And finally, congratulations Plain of the Herbs, a great victory!
