So the Irish local and EU elections are currently counting, could someone explain to me specifically how the process when a candidate exceeds their wrote works? Like how the votes are distributed amongst the other candidates. Examples are welcome!
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In preferential voting you score candidates in order of preference, 1, 2, 3 etc.
They count all the votes marked 1. If they get enough votes to win, then they win. If they don’t get enough votes to win then they eliminate the candidate in last place and count the votes marked 2 on those ballots. Repeat for the other numbers until someone wins.
So you have candidates Tom, Dick and Harry. Tom gets 5 votes marked 1, Dick gets 3 and Harry gets 2.
Harry is eliminated. Those two votes for him are now transferred to someone else. They look at who they voted 2 for. Tom gets one, Dick gets one.
Tom now has 6 votes, Dick has 4. Tom has a majority and wins.
The EU vote is a bit different. Say an area has 10 seats up for vote. The TDH Party put up three candidates, Tom, Dick and Harry. If they win one seat, Tom becomes an MEP. If they win two seats, Harry also becomes an MEP.
The EU election is a little more complicated than that. Once a party has won a seat, the number of their votes is divided in half and the next seat goes to the next highest scoring party (which might still be them). So if the TDK get 6 or the 10 votes, they win a seat. Then their score is counted as 3 to see if they win the next seat. If they win that second seat then their score is divided by 3 instead so their score counts as 2 to see if they win a third seat for poor Harry.
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