How it all added up

WHEN Clare constituency returning officer Pat Wallace and his staff went through the preliminary steps we described last week, they had 58,495 ballot papers; 579 of these were invalid for different reasons, which left a valid poll of 57,916. We needed four seats so this was divided by five to give 11,583 and one was added on to give the quota of 11,584.
When the first count was finished, each and every candidate had his or her own bundle of votes and nobody had reached the quota. The candidate with the smallest bundle of votes was eliminated and his votes distributed to whoever was marked as number 2 on the papers, for example, 10 of them had Patrick Brassil 1 and Pat Breen 2, so Pat Breen got 10 transfers. Everybody now had two bundles – their original number 1s and the votes they got from Brassil. Nine ballot papers only had Brassil number 1 and no number 2. These could not be given to anybody, so they were called non-transferable.
There was still nobody elected so the next lowest person, JJ McCabe, was eliminated. His votes were distributed. There were two kinds of votes to be distributed. There were votes where McCabe was number 1 and these went to whoever was number 2 and also there were votes that were Brassil number 1 and McCabe number 2 and these went to whoever was marked as number 3. Again, there were five papers with no number after McCabe, so they joined the bundle of non-transferable.
Everybody now had three bundles, their own number ones, the ones they got as number 2 after Brassil and the ones they got as number 3 after McCabe. After the fourth count, everybody had four bundles, after the fifth they had five bundles and so on.
This continued for a number of counts, with each candidate picking up a new bundle of votes each time. By the time you got to the 10th count you could have number 10s counting. Imagine this vote, which I am making up myself.
1, Patrick Brassil; 2, JJ McCabe; 3, Brian Meaney; 4, Jim Connolly; 5, Madeline McAleer; 6, Sarah Ferrigan; 7, Brian Markham; 8, Gerry Walshe; 9. Ann Cronin; 10, John Hillery and 11, Michael McNamara.
The vote started in Brassil’s bundle in count one. At the second count, it was transferred to McCabe. When he was eliminated, it went to number 3, Meaney on the third count. When Meaney was eliminated on count eight, the next people on the paper, Connolly, McAleer and Ferrigan were already gone, so it went to number 7, Markham. When he was eliminated, Walshe and Cronin were gone, so it went to number 10, Hillery. When he was eliminated, it went to number 11, McNamara.
When a candidate is eliminated, the vote is moved along until it ends up either in a bundle that elects somebody or it runs out of numbers and then it goes into the non-transferable bundle.
In counts two to five last Saturday, the candidates were eliminated one at a time because they had enough votes to change the order of those above them.
However, after the fifth count, McAleer with 509 and Cronin with 521 were eliminated together because they could not affect the order above them. Combined they had 1,030 and the next lowest person had 1,075. So even if Cronin got every one of McAleer’s, it would not change the order and Cronin would still be next to go.
After the sixth count, it was slightly different. Connolly on 1,216, Meaney on 1,266 and Markham on 1,825 combined could not catch Hillery, just like McAleer and Cronin could not catch Connolly.
However, they could not be eliminated together because each one of them had a chance of reaching another magical figure of 2,896. This was 25% of the quota and any candidate who reaches that percentage is entitled to reclaim election expenses. This makes it a very important milestone for candidates lower down the field. By eliminating them one at a time, the returning officer gave each one of them a chance to reach that figure.
When you reached the end of the 10th count, each remaining candidate had 10 separate bundles. Pat Breen was top of the list, just 596 votes short of the quota.
When Mulcahy was eliminated, he got a transfer of 2,346. He only needed 596, so 1,750 were surplus to requirements and had to be transferred to other candidates. All the 2,346 were examined and allocated to whoever had the next number on the ballot paper.
Joe Carey was next on 2,048 of them, which was 87% so he got 87% of the surplus, which gave him an extra 1,528 votes. Dooley had approximately 3% of them so he got an extra 56 votes and James Breen had approximately 9% and got 166.
At that stage, Carey was elected and there were only two candidates left for one seat. That had to go to the higher of the two and Dooley was declared elected. The returning officer could have distributed McNamara’s surplus of 301, Carey’s surplus of 905 and then distributed James Breen’s votes but it would have been an unnecessary exercise.
At the end, Pat Breen had 11,584 votes in his column (because his surplus had been distributed), McNamara had 11,883, Carey had 12,489, Dooley had 11,021 James Breen had 9,520 and there were 1,419 votes in the non-transferable column.
These all add up to 57,916, which was the valid poll figure that was there at the start.