[EM] Hand counting election methods

[Olli Salmi]

At 23:32 +0000 17.11.2003, Gervase Lam wrote:
>  > Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:59:39 +0100
>>  From: David GLAUDE <dglaude at gmx.net>
>>  Subject: Re: [EM] Electronic Voting Bill of Rights?
>
>>  I would like to know wich one are possible to handle with manual
>>  counting on large scale.
>
>I am sure there are lots that can be hand counted

The way they count in Switzerland would be suitable for Approval, but 
it's fairly complicated. It's based on forms. Here are examples from 
the election of the 7-member executive in the City of Zürich.

First the votes are filled in a counting form:
http://homelink.ch/wahlburo/rr030406/zb_rr03a.pdf
Each form can take 50 ballots.

Here's how it's done:
http://homelink.ch/wahlburo/rr030406/zb_rr03a_muster.pdf

Then a summary form is filled in:
http://homelink.ch/wahlburo/rr030406/zs_rr03a.pdf

Then the result is summarized
http://homelink.ch/wahlburo/rr030406/pr_rr03a.pdf

The forms are available in Word format as well in the same directory..

The same procedure is used for proportional elections, basically, but 
of course more complicated. There are printed ballots for each party, 
but the voter can strike out names or substitute names from another 
list. The unchanged ballots are counted and then counting forms are 
used to count the changed ballots, from each list to each other list. 
These are summarized 
http://www.konolfingen.ch//politik/pdf/Zusammenzug.pdf. Then the 
votes for each candidate and party are summarized 
http://www.konolfingen.ch//politik/pdf/Kandidaten%20u%20Parteilisten.pdf. 
And yet two forms for the results 
http://www.konolfingen.ch//politik/pdf/Protokoll.pdf, 
http://www.konolfingen.ch//politik/pdf/Ergebnisse.pdf.

Here are official regulations of the forms for federal elections. Not 
very easy to read in HTML.
http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/161_11/app3.html
http://www.gesetze.ch/sr/161.11/161.11_012.htm (the same text, even 
more difficult)

Olli Salmi