Under certain conditions, this allocation achieves equal voting powers for all people represented, independent of the size of their constituency.
Proportional allocation would result in excessive voting powers for the electorates of larger constituencies.
The Penrose method is not currently being used for any notable decision-making body, but it has been proposed for apportioning representation in a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly,[1][2] and for voting in the Council of the European Union.
In this context, the method was proposed to compute voting weights of member states in the Council of the European Union.
The associated voting weights are compared in the adjacent table along with the population data of the member states.
In the table below, the countries' voting weights are computed as the square root of their year-2005 population in millions.
This procedure was originally published by Penrose in 1946 based on pre-World War II population figures.
[1] It has been claimed that the Penrose square root law is limited to votes for which public opinion is equally divided for and against.