  Most democratic countries use election methods to transform election results
into whole numbers which usually give the number of seats in a legislative body
the parties obtained. Which election method does this best can be specified by
measuring the error between the allocated result and the ideal proportion. We
show how to find an election method which is best suited to a given error
function. We also discuss several properties of election methods that have been
labelled paradoxa. In particular we explain the highly publicised ``Alabama''
Paradox for the Hare/Hamilton method and show that other popular election
methods come with their very own paradoxa.
