exhausted ballots, which means candidates may be elected without reaching the quota. History STV was first used in Ireland in the University of Dublin constituency in the 1918 Westminster election. The 1917 Speaker's Conference had recommended STV for all multi-seat Westminster constituencies, but it was only applied to university constituencies. With the growth of revolutionary Irish nationalism in Ireland, STV was introduced at local level by the UK government to ensure unionist minority representation in nationalist-majority areas and vice versa; however, minority representation did not always occur in practice. STV was first applied in the 1919 Sligo borough election under the Sligo Corporation Act, 1918, a private act of Parliament sponsored by the corporation after representations from a mainly-Protestant group of leading ratepayers. The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1919 extended STV universally from the 1920 local elections, and the Government of Ireland Act 1920 applied it to the 1921 Home Rule elections. The 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State mandated proportional representation, and STV was specified in statute law. Initially 46% of Dáil members were elected from constituencies of seven, eight or nine seats, until 1935 when seven seats became the largest size. Since 1947 Dáil constituencies have been no larger than five seats. The 60 members of the Free State Seanad were intended to be directly elected, one of four cohorts every three years, with the state forming a single 15-seat STV constituency. The only such election was in 1925, for 19 seats (15 scheduled plus 4 casual vacancies). There were 78 candidates on the ballot paper, counting took two weeks, and many independents were elected. The process was seen as too cumbersome, and so indirect election by Oireachtas members was introduced for subsequent Seanad elections. Two attempts have been made by Fianna Fáil governments to abolish STV and replace it with the first past the post plurality system. Both attempts were rejected by voters in referendums held in 1959 and again in 1968. In the past, gerrymandering was also attempted by several governments, in particular by varying the sizes (that is, the number of seats) of particular constituencies. This attempt backfired, however, in the 1977 general election when a larger than expected vote-swing caused a tipping effect resulting in disproportionate losses for the government. This botched attempt at Gerrymandering became known as the "Tullymander" after minister James Tully. Since 1977, constituencies have been drawn up by an