QPQ , a quota-preferential STV-like election rule

Olli Salmi, in a posting to an Election Methods list [6], has suggested a new quota-preferential election rule, which is developed slightly further in this article, and which is remarkably similar to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in its effects. I shall call it QPQ, for QuotaPreferential by Quotient. Both in its properties and in the results it gives, it seems to be more like Meek’s version of STV [2] than the traditional version [3]. This is surprising since: (i) in marked contrast with STV, the quota in QPQ is used only as a criterion for election, and not in the transfer of surplus votes; (ii) QPQ, unlike Meek’s method, involves no iterative processes, and so the votes can be counted by hand; and (iii) QPQ derives from the European continental tradition of party list systems (specifically, d’Hondt’s rule), which is usually regarded as quite different from STV. I do not imagine that anyone who is already using STV will see any reason to switch to QPQ; but people who are already using d’Hondt’s rule may feel that QPQ is a natural progression of it, and so more acceptable than STV.