[EM] Real Ballot Data & Analysis

[James Gilmour]

I had written:
> >If these ballots come from the dataset I think they do, much 
> of those 
> >data were machine-generated (reconstructed) from election result 
> >sheets, ie they are not actual voters' ballots.

Then Eric asked:
> What would be the actual difference?

We'll never know because we do not have access to the real ballots.  You'll find papers by Brian
Wichman and others on the generation of "plausible election data" in the journal 'Voting matters'
and possibly elsewhere.

I mentioned this potential problem because I know from the limited analysis I have done so far on
one of the full datasets from the Dáil Éireann 2002 election that large numbers of real voters mark
their preferences in ways that make no sense whatsoever to someone like me.  We have no way of
knowing (until now) whether the machine generated preferences do indeed contain all the quirks we
can now see in real complete ballots.  These realities would certainly affect the simulation of an
STV-PR (multi-winner) election.
James