What is the Hondt method?
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The Hondt method, which is also known as the quotient method, consists of mathematical standard used to convert votes in mandates so as to set up organs of a college nature. This method comes after his creator, the Belgium lawyer Victor Hondt who was born in 1841 and died in 1901.
The system of Proportional representation is characterized by the fact that the number of elects for each candidacy that stands for a certain election is proportional to the voters who had chosen to vote in that same election. In the scope of this system there are several methods that can be used to change votes into mandates. The Hondt method is one of them. It is the most used method around the world and it is largely used in many democratic counties, among which we can find Portugal.
Some of its advantages are the following: it ensures a good proportionality (relation between votes and mandates) and it is very simple to apply when compared to others. On the other hand, the main disadvantage it has is the fact that it tends to favour the biggest political parties.
In order to better explain its use I´ll show you a simple example: the electoral circle “XPTO” has the right of electing 7 members and there are 4 parties that stand for the election: A, B, C e D. After having counted the votes, the distribution was the following: A - 12000 votes; B - 7500 votes; C - 4500 votes; D - 3000 votes. After applying the Hondt Method we have the following series of quotients:
| Divisor | Party | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | C | D | |
| 1 | 12000 | 7500 | 4500 | 3000 |
| 2 | 6000 | 3750 | 2250 | 1500 |
| 3 | 4000 | 2500 | 1500 | 1000 |
| 4 | 3000 | 1875 | 1125 | 750 |
After the division, the 7 biggest quotients are chosen. Thus, the distribution of places will be divided according to the following way:
- Party A - 3 members, corresponding to the quotients 12000 (1.º elected), 6000 (3.º elected) and 4000 (5.º elected).
- Party B - 2 members, corresponding to the quotients 7500 (2.º elected) and 3750 (6.º elected).
- Party C - 1 member, corresponding to the quotient 4500 (4.º elected).
- Party D - 1 member, corresponding to the quotient 3000 (7.º and the last one elected), taking advantage of the rule which, in case of equality, gives the place to the less voted list, snatching the place away from Party A.
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