[EM] Tallying visualization for Condorcet methods?

[Scott Ritchie]

On Sun, 2006-02-05 at 20:55 -0600, Paul Kislanko wrote:
> 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.)
> 
I'm sorry, I don't get it - what exactly does this graph mean?  The axis
are unlabeled.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie