[Election-Methods] KPFK LSB election

[Jonathan Lundell]

KPFK (the LA member of the Pacifica radio network) recently held its  
election for its Listener Station Board. They used STV to elect 9  
board members and 5 alternates. 2246 ballots were counted by hand,  
using a spreadsheet as a tally aid.

There were 27 rounds. Curiously, a write-in candidate was elected in  
the first round, and the next seat wasn't filled until the 20th round.  
It was a hotly contested election, but (un?)fortunately I don't know  
much about KPFK politics.

I've been unable to find a copy of the counting rules, but it appears  
to have been a BC-style count. There are fractional votes even in the  
first round, for reasons I don't understand. The spreadsheet used for  
the tally looks pretty clever, but even so the hand count took several  
days.

The five alternates are the last five candidates eliminated, in  
reverse order of elimination. There are at least a couple of reasons  
why such a method of choosing alternates is bogus, but the main  
election looks reasonably well done, considering the constraints of  
hand counting.

I've posted the tally sheet (I don't know whether it's official; I got  
it informally from one of the candidates), temporarily, for anyone who  
might be interested:

http://homepage.mac.com/jlundell/filechute/KPFK%20hand%20count.zip