Use
The Norfolk Legislative Assembly on Norfolk Island is elected using a form of cumulative voting where voters cannot give all their votes to one candidate. It is also used heavily in corporate governance, where it is mandated by some (7) U.S. states, and it was used to elect the Illinois House of Representatives from 1870 until 1980. It was used in England between 1870 and 1902, under the Elementary Education Act 1870, to elect school boards. Starting in the late 1980s, it has been adopted in a growing number of jurisdictions in the United States, in each case to resolve a lawsuit brought against bloc voting systems.
With strategic voting, one can calculate how many shares are needed to elect a certain number of candidates, and to determine how many candidates a person holding a certain number of shares can elect.
The formula to determine the number of shares necessary to elect a majority of directors is:
where
- X = number of shares needed to elect a given number of directors
- S = total number of shares at the meeting
- N = number of directors needed
- D = total number of directors to be elected
The formula to determine how many directors can be elected by a faction controlling a certain number of shares is:
with N becoming the number of directors which can be elected and X the number of shares controlled. Note that several sources include a variation of this formula using "X" rather than "(X-1)". Such a formulation does not assure you of having enough votes to elect a director if the "-1” is missing. Without the "-1" you will only be able to determine how many shares you must have to tie, not what you need to win. Of course not every shareholder votes perfectly every time, so the flawed formula may work in many practical instances despite it being conceptually flawed and mathematically wrong.
This is equivalent to the Droop quota for each seat desired.
A simple cumulative-voting calculator appears at sbbizlaw.com, which eliminates the need for formulas and fractions. The reader can enter the number of shares voting; the readout states the number of directors the reader can elect, and vice versa. By entering the number of directors to be elected, the reader can find the number of shares necessary to elect one or any specified number of directors.
Some Bugzilla installations allow cumulative voting to decide which software bugs most urgently need correcting.
Read more about this topic: Cumulative Voting
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