[EM] Tallying visualization for Condorcet methods?

[Paul Kislanko]

Jiri Räsänen asked:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am new to this list. I am interested for possible ways to visualize 
> the votes tallying and the results for Beatpath method.
> 
> Previously I have done some campaigning for the use of STV and found 
> out that once I could draw the graphical version of the vote 
> counting, 
> people would get the feeling that they understand what's going on. 
> Before this, when explaining the system, people were scratching their 
> heads.
> 
> For Beatpath this might be a harder thing to do, but I'm sure there 
> must be some ways to present the vote counting in a visual 
> and dynamic 
> way that is sensible for the functioning of the system.
> 
> My personal experience is that people would go to the extreme 
> to avoid 
> thinking. As most of you propably have experienced people 
> just bluntly 
> saying "oh, that is too complicated" when you try to explain a voting 
> system.  A good visualization can give a person a sense that he/she 
> somehow grasps what's going on, although more comprehensive 
> understangin may remain unaccomlished.
> 
> For the matter of political reform in any instance outside computer 
> scientist and mathematicians, I think a good visualization will be 
> essential.
> 
> I did a search on this list on visualization, but found not much 
> useful. Has anyone of you privately been thinking of ways to 
> visualize 
> Beatpath or other Condorcet methods?

I doubt that there's any way to graphically show the difference beteen
ranked-pairs and beatpath (for instance), but to just demonstrate how ranked
ballots show the preponderance of voters' opinions graphically, I used this
http://vmedia.rivals.com/uploads/1048/317514.gif

In that "election" (really a "sports poll" about which is the best team)
there was a #1 and "everybody else", but the "everybody else" part is a
pretty good picture of why you need to analyze the ballots in various ways
(i.e. beatpath vs ranked pairs, minmax, etc.)