The provisions for bye-elections are contained in sections 17 to 20.
(1) The elector is supplied three days before the election with copies of the various party lists; he is given as many votes as there are members to be elected; he may strike out any names and insert others in any of the lists supplied to him, or compose his own list; he may repeat the name of the same candidate three times, but no more; but in no case may the total number of names exceed the number of members to be elected.
(2) The Hagenbach-Bischoff rule, like the d'Hondt rule, aims at finding an electoral quotient which will allow all the seats to be allotted to the different parties without remainder. In the former rule this is found by trial. The following example explains its mechanism:—
Suppose, in an election for sixteen seats, five lists have obtained votes as follows:—
List. Votes.
A 5,537
B 9,507
C 3,885
D 4,769
E 377
———-
Total 24,075
The first quota is ascertained as prescribed in section 11. The number of votes is divided by one more than the number of vacancies, and the result is increased by one, thus:—
24075/(16+1) + 1 = 1417
It will be observed that this quota is identical with the Droop quota of the single transferable vote system. The totals obtained by each list are divided by this quota, as many representatives being allotted to each list as the list contains the quota. Remainders are ignored.
Lists. Votes. Quota. Representatives.
A 5,537 ÷ 1,417 3
B 9,507 ÷ 1,417 6
C 3,885 ÷ 1,417 2
D 4,769 ÷ 1,417 3
E 377 ÷ 1,417 0
—
Total 14
Only fourteen out of sixteen seats have been allotted in this operation. It is obvious that the quota is too large, and a smaller quota is ascertained in the following way. The number of votes for each list is divided by one more than the number of members already assigned to such list, and the first seat still to be disposed of is allotted to that list which has the largest quotient. The following table shows the process:—