Hare quota

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In the study of apportionment, the Hare quota (sometimes called the simple quota or Hamilton quota) is the number of voters represented by each legislator under a system of proportional representation. In these voting systems, the quota is the number of votes that guarantees a candidate, or a party in some cases, captures a seat. The Hare quota is the total number of votes divided by the number of seats to be filled.

The Hare quota was used in the original proposal for a single transferable vote (STV-Hare) system, but has since been almost entirely supplanted for this use by the more mathematically-accurate Droop quota.

However, the quota continues to be used in setting electoral thresholds, as well as for calculating apportionments by the largest remainder method (LR-Hare) or other quota-based methods of proportional representation. In such use cases, the Hare quota gives unbiased apportionments that favor neither large nor small parties.^[1]