[EM] IRV in San Francisco

[Warren Schudy]

1) Did the ballot only allow each voter to give the top three choices? I 
suspect that restriction would significantly decrease the effectiveness of 
IRV.

2) I suspect the root cause of the crappy election software used is
gullible non-technical election clerks making purchasing decisions.  As a
software engineer, I would require a code review before purchasing
software for something as fault-intolerant as voting systems or nuclear
power plant control.

-wjs

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Toplak Jurij wrote:

> I am forwarding this from the Ed Still's newsletter:
> San Francisco -- complete results from Instant Runoff Voting
> The San Francisco Chronicle reportsL The new voting system, also known as instant runoff voting, was adopted by voters in 2002 and put into use for the first time in Tuesday's election, but it got bogged down Wednesday when the computer program written to tabulate votes choked on the unanticipated large number of ballots.
> For the remainder of the story, go to http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/002749.html
> 
> 
> To read these and earlier stories in full, go to http://www.votelaw.com/blog. 
> 

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| Warren Schudy                           |
| WPI Class of 2005                       |
| Physics and computer science major      |
| AIM: WJSchudy  email: wschudy at wpi.edu   |
| http://users.wpi.edu/~wschudy/          |
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