Austin Bencini (February 11) is shocked that our Constitutional Court has joined the chorus of disapproval of our electoral system.

The PRSTV (proportional representation single transferable vote) has many merits but it is linked to a ‘quota’. There are several quotas in the system but we happen to have chosen the ‘droop quota’ (1/number of seats + 1) which is supposed to favour the small parties – not always true – and to be slightly quicker in the count, barring mistakes, but is arithmetically dicey.

If our system had chosen the more straightforward and arithmetically sound “hare quota” (1/ number of seats) our cases of perverse results would have practically disappeared, and no corrective mechanism would have been necessary.

I do not subscribe to the idea of making mistakes and correcting them afterwards. Just avoid them from the beginning.

Corrections come at a cost. In our present case we would have six extra members (71 instead of 65, an extra strain on the new building) with unnecessary extra governance costs through honoraria, pensions, staff, allowances, overheads and ancillaries.