Maybe I can explain. There are three ways you could do this for the ones with the surplus number of votes. You could just look at those surpluses and ask what are the numbers on those, for number two, which would be the next instance. So of those surplus, you ask who is number two, and we'll give the votes there. That would be one way.
A second way would be to do a random selection. The problem with doing it that way is that you don't know that the number two preference on the 52nd ballot that is over the surplus isn't the same as the first person. Maybe the first person who contributed to your surplus had very different ideas as to who should be number two.
So what the process has provided for in the bill here is that you look at all the ballots, every one of them, and you look for that candidate who has received more than a surplus. You look at each ballot, and you look for what was the second preference for all of those persons. So every ballot is in play.
Then what you need to do is to determine what is the value of those. So the process here is that you calculate what's called a “transfer value”. The transfer value is simply that you would essentially consider the vote to be a whole number one, so what portion of that vote of the first preference would have been necessary in order to just achieve the quota and nothing more?
If, for example, I needed only 75% of every person's vote in here in order to reach the quota, that means that 25% of everybody's vote in here can be used for the second preference that everybody in here expressed.