[EM] cheering for software

[James Green-Armytage]

James Green-Armytage responding to David Gamble

>Some very (in my opinion) user friendly STV counting software is freely
>available from the Electoral Reform Society at
>http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/votingsystems/estv.htm
>This system can be used to count STV elections using ERS97 rules ( the
>current version of Newland-Britton) and also (using the withdrawls
>function) to count single member Condorcet and Sequential STV elections.

Yes, I agree that eSTV is very nice. I know nothing about software design,
but my feeling is that eSTV is a good model to emulate for voting systems
software, at least from the user interface point of view. I am hoping that
similarly user friendly programs can be designed to tally for various
versions of Condorcet, CPO-STV (or at least the local variant of it), and
other assorted voting systems. It would be fabulous to get a whole lot of
voting systems together in one big program, including ones that aren't
contenders for being *the* single-winner system or *the* proportional
system. But I guess that the first goal is to get interfaces for the
really good systems.

What kind of software do countries use who have STV elections? They don't
all do handcounts, do they? Isn't there some place in New Zealand where
they use Meek STV for public elections? I wonder what kind of software
they use, and whether it is the exclusive property of some vendor or other.

I don't know really what the different arrangements are as far as
licensing etc. I think that it would be nice for a program to have a
transparent code, such that there were no hidden secrets in it; that would
definitely be good for the integrity of the software and people's
confidence about using it for purposes with  

At the same time, though, I recognize that someone who spent the amount of
work necessary to create such a program would want to keep some kind of
control over the product... I believe that eSTV has a sort of temporary
licensing system where you can register for free, but you have to
re-register after a year or so. I guess that that is ERS's way of keeping
some kind of ownership, and maybe the possibility of using the software
for commercial purposes.

Okay, wow, I'm rambling.

James