[EM] Re: Hand counting election methods

[Gervase Lam]

> Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:11:01 -0500
> From: Dave Ketchum <davek at clarityconnect.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Electronic Voting Bill of Rights?

> CONDORCET:  Choices here also:
>       Count as in Plurality?  Tempting, since a majority winner would
> end the task.

That's it!  You've reminded me of a way to do a Condorcet hand count.

An explanation follows, the logistics of which could be improved.  For 
brevity, I have not taken into account tied votes nor do I know how to 
atm.  I want to get to bed as soon as possible.

Suppose there are 10 candidates.  Create 10 large teams.  Each team 
represents a candidate who was given the top rank.  Each of the teams 
obtain the relevant ballots.  From this, you are now able to fill in a 
large proportion of the pairwise matrix as you know that a top ranked 
candidate is a beats all candidate.

Each large team has 9 sub-teams, the 9 being for each 2nd ranked 
candidate.  Each sub-team receives the ballots from its parent large team.
Again, from this, you are now able to fill in a large proportion of the 
pairwise matrix, a part of which has already been filled in by the parent.

The 9 sub-teams each have 8 sub-teams etc, etc...

Therefore, you are able to complete a Condorcet hand count in N - 1 
iterations, where N is the number of candidates.

Thanks,
Gervase.