An issue of guaranteed representation in a variant of Hamilton’s method

Chambers-Wall, Graham; McCune, David

doi:10.2140/involve.2024.17.373

Download this article
	For screen
	For printing

Recent Issues

The Journal

About the journal

Ethics and policies

Peer-review process

Submission guidelines

ISSN 1944-4184 (online)

ISSN 1944-4176 (print)

Author index

To appear

Other MSP journals

An issue of guaranteed representation in a variant of Hamilton's method

Graham Chambers-Wall and David McCune

Vol. 17 (2024), No. 3, 373–396

DOI: 10.2140/involve.2024.17.373

Abstract

The Arkansas Republican party invented an apportionment method for their 2016 presidential primary that is a variant of the classical apportionment method Hamilton’s method. We provide a formula for the probability that these two methods produce the same apportionment in three-candidate elections, assuming all election outcomes are equally likely. We also prove that the method invented by Arkansas Republicans is more favorable to lower-ranked candidates than Hamilton’s method.

Keywords

apportionment, Hamilton's method, presidential primaries

Mathematical Subject Classification

Primary: 91B10

Secondary: 91B14

Milestones

Received: 18 June 2021

Revised: 2 April 2022

Accepted: 27 February 2023

Published: 17 July 2024

Communicated by Kenneth S. Berenhaut

Authors

Graham Chambers-Wall
William Jewell College Liberty, MO United States

David McCune
Department of Mathematics and Data Science William Jewell College Liberty, MO United States

Vol. 17, No. 3, 2024