The National Electoral Commission (CNE) has been doing a great job of releasing clearly presented daily results. The data has been a joy. At the office, photocopies of the results have been floating around, and the question from everyone is what do these numbers mean in terms of seats?Timor Leste uses a modified d’Hondt method for allocating seats. Additionally, a party must obtain 3% of all valid votes cast to even be entered into the d’Hondt formula. Exceeding this threshold does not guarantee a seat. When all the votes are counted, based on earlier voter turnout rates, 3% should be about 12,000 votes.
There are d’Hondt calculators online, but for those who prefer homebrew, here is the run-down:
The modified d’Hondt method works in three steps:
1. Identify the parties that have met the 3% threshold
2. Divide the valid votes for each of these parties by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…
3. Identify the number of highest resulting quotients (the results of the division process) equal to the number of seat being allocated.
This BBC site shows another method for doing the calculation, which I think is less straightforward, but interesting nonetheless.
In the above figure (please click to enlarge), the red numbers are the 65 highest quotients. If there were 67 seats in the parliament, the next two highest quotients would be 5274.8 (ASDT/PSD) and 5251.1 (CNRT); the 66th and 67th seats would go to these parties.
These outcomes are based on results available at the Dili District Counting Center this afternoon, and reflect totals as of 11:00, 5 July 2007. All votes have been counted except for in Dili, and the Dili figure used here is only 86% complete. Nationally, the counting is 97% complete (CNE’s calculations).
I expect that this will not be the final seat configuration - but close - and I’ll wait for tonight's results to do more number crunching. No system is perfectly proportional, later I’ll look at the mathematical ‘bias’ built into the d’Hondt method.
Overall, this parliamentary election has gone more smoothly than most people expected - violence was low, participation high, and the number of blank and null votes are down. As with most things: practice and patience.
Photo: Dili District Counting Center.
