Tutorial 5: Initial seats

In this tutorial we will learn how to specify initial seats a candidate can receive before the allocation starts.

United States - Congressional Apportionment

435 seats will be distributed among the 50 states according to the census. Each state gains 1 initial seat, and the remaining seats will be allocated using the Huntington-Hill method.

 1name: United States Congressional Apportionment 2000
 2method: highest_averages
 3method_params:
 4    divisor_f: huntington_hill
 5# 435 - 50
 6seats: 385
 7initial_seats: 1
 8resume_allocation: true
 9candidates:
10- name: Alabama
11  votes: 4461130
12- name: Alaska
13  votes: 628933
14- name: Arizona
15  votes: 5140683
16...
17- name: West Virginia
18  votes: 1813077
19- name: Wisconsin
20  votes: 5371210
21- name: Wyoming
22  votes: 495304

In lines 7 and 8 we specifiy that each candidate will start with 1 seat (initial_seats), and that the allocation process will take into account the seats already allocated to candidates (resume_allocation). Since this is the default, the previous schema is equivalent to:

 1name: United States Congressional Apportionment 2000
 2method: highest_averages
 3method_params:
 4    divisor_f: huntington_hill
 5# 435 - 50
 6seats: 385
 7initial_seats: 1
 8candidates:
 9- name: Alabama
10  votes: 4461130
11- name: Alaska
12  votes: 628933
13- name: Arizona
14  votes: 5140683
15...
16- name: West Virginia
17  votes: 1813077
18- name: Wisconsin
19  votes: 5371210
20- name: Wyoming
21  votes: 495304

Spain - National Parliament - Districts apportionment

350 seats will be distributed among the 50 provinces and the 2 autonomous cities according to the census. Each autonomous city will receive 1 final seat. Each province will receive 2 initial seats, and the remaining seats will be allocated using the largest remainder method with a Hare quota ignoring the already allocated seats, allocating again from scratch.

  1. First, create the schema for the autonomous cities:

     1name: Circunscripciones Congreso de los Diputados - 2015
 2type: group
 3divisions:
 4- name: Ciudades autónomas
 5  method: noop
 6  initial_seats: 1
 7  candidates:
 8  - name: Ceuta
 9    votes: 84963
10  - name: Melilla
11    votes: 84509

    The noop method does not allocate any new seat, just returns its input with any initial seats assigned to candidates.

    If a different number of seats were assigned to each city, the property min_seats:

     1name: Circunscripciones Congreso de los Diputados - 2015
 2type: group
 3divisions:
 4- name: Ciudades autónomas
 5  method: noop
 6  # default value
 7  initial_seats: min_seats
 8  candidates:
 9  - name: Ceuta
10    votes: 84963
11    min_seats: 2
12  - name: Melilla
13    votes: 84509
14    min_seats: 1

  2. Then, add the schema for provinces:

     1name: Circunscripciones Congreso de los Diputados - 2015
 2type: group
 3divisions:
 4
 5- name: Ciudades autónomas
 6  method: noop
 7  initial_seats: 1
 8  candidates:
 9  - name: Ceuta
10    votes: 84963
11  - name: Melilla
12    votes: 84509
13
14- name: Provincias
15  # 348 - 2*50
16  seats: 248
17  method: largest_remainder
18  method_params:
19    quota_f: hare
20  initial_seats: 2
21  resume_allocation: no
22  candidates:
23  - name: Alicante/Alacant
24    votes: 1868438
25  - name: Almería
26    votes: 701688
27  ...
28  - name: Valladolid
29    votes: 529157
30  - name: Zaragoza
31    votes: 960111

    Each province will get 2 free seats:

    1- name: Provincias
2  # 348 - 2*50
3  seats: 248
4  method: largest_remainder
5  method_params:
6    quota_f: hare
7  initial_seats: 2
8  resume_allocation: no

    The remaining seats will allocated by Hare, ignoring the initial free seats (resume_allocation is set to false):

    1- name: Provincias
2  # 348 - 2*50
3  seats: 248
4  method: largest_remainder
5  method_params:
6    quota_f: hare
7  initial_seats: 2
8  resume_allocation: no