[EM] STV can be hand counted...

[James Gilmour]

Stephane wrote: 
> First I meant long not hard and second if you've got the 
> (wo)manpower it is not really long. I'm sorry it was the 
> feeling I got after resolving alone 12 elections of 15 
> candidates and 15 voters. So please everyone, I remove that 
> opinion, STV is perfectly feasible by hand in a reasonable 
> time, with enough persons knowing what they do.

Stephane, sorry if I sounded a little harsh in my one-word response.  My problem is that, as an
active campaigner for practical reform, I encounter comments about the complications and "problems"
of STV-PR counting almost every week from those who are opposed to any reform at all.  (We have a
"First Past The Post" Campaign here in Scotland that is very actively doing everything it can to
wreck the STV-PR reform that is now going through the Scottish Parliament.)

The STV-PR elections you describe above are amongst the most frustrating to have to count by hand.
Usually you end up transferring small numbers of ballot papers of ever-decreasing values in a most
time-consuming process.  The effort seems out of all proportion to the numbers of candidates or the
numbers of electors.  For such elections I would strongly recommend that you punch all the
preferences from the ballot papers into a computer data file and then use one of the (freebie) STV
programs to do all the sorting, counting and tabulation of the results and intermediate
calculations.

For public elections (FPTP and MMP) we already use an army of enumerators in one counting centre in
each local government area.  Northern Ireland experience shows it will be no great problem to train
them to handle STV-PR.  The main thing is make sure that the senior officials really understand the
STV rules and understand what their staffs have to do.  Here in the UK we have a stupid obsession
with getting the results out as fast as possible.  So we start counting about one hour after the
polls have closed and count all through the night.  Constituencies compete to see which can be the
first to declare!  And we have through-the-night TV programs where pundits predict the total outcome
based on projections from only one or two results!!  I am pleased to say that ever since 1973 a more
sensible approach has been taken in Northern Ireland for their STV-PR elections.  They start fresh
the morning after polling day, having had a good night's sleep.  For large public elections most of
the counting is completed by mid-day on the second day after polling, with all of the results
through by mid-afternoon.

Ironically, one complaint about the electronic voting and computerised counting in the 2002 Dáil
Éireann election that produced "instant" results once the button had been pressed, was that
established politicians who were booted out by the voters had no time to adjust to their impending
fate.  With manual sorting and counting, they would have seen for some hours that their piles of
ballot papers were not likely to be high enough to secure election and that transfers were passing
them by, stage by stage.  This pandering to over-inflated political egos was brought forward as a
"problem" during the Stage 1 oral evidence sessions when the the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill
was being considered by the Local Government and Transport Committee of the Parliament.  Such
considerations seem a long way from most of the topics discussed on this list, but (sadly) we do
have deal with them if we want to win practical reform.

James