[Election-Methods] KPFK LSB election

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Dec 30, 2007, at 12:53 PM, James Gilmour wrote:

> Jonathan Lundell  > Sent: 30 December 2007 19:22
>> 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
>
>
> Jonathan
> This is very interesting and it would be very useful to see the  
> Election Rules they used.  I don't think these are BC-like rules,
> i.e. applying the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method (WIGM) of  
> transferring surpluses.  I suspect the rules are more like the STV
> rules for the Australian Federal Senate elections, i.e. Inclusive  
> Gregory Method (IGM).
>
> I suggest that, because when Grace Aaron's surplus is transferred  
> (Round 21), they show only one transfer value (cell BK7 =
> 0.04476852).  But Grace Aaron then held ballot papers of two  
> different values, namely 1.00 (her own first preferences and all the
> first preferences transferred to her from excluded candidates) and  
> 25.5 ballots @ 0.213867(etc) transferred from the surplus of
> W01-Ahjamu Makalani.  If they had been using BC-like rules, they  
> would have had to apply two different transfer values.  Instead,
> they have averaged, the way the Australians do (and that is  
> fundamentally flawed).
>
> They also seem to have used arithmetic of indeterminate precision -  
> there is no truncation to a stated precision.  Some results are
> shown to 14 decimal places, others to 16 decimal places.  The  
> differencing values are shown to 29 decimal places.  I don't know how
> they did these calculations because my version of Excel (Excel 2002)  
> cuts out at 15 decimal places.  They start with 2246 votes, but
> at Round 5 they have gained nearly one whole extra vote and then  
> they progressively lose votes.  If the calculations are done
> correctly and consistently, the vote total at the completion of each  
> Round should always be exactly 2246.
>
> Although I can follow the calculations, it seems illogical to me to  
> have put the numbers of transferred votes in a column before the
> numbers of ballot papers from which the vote values were calculated.

Yes, that's confusing.

And you're clearly right about this not being BC, which would, now  
that I think about it, not be amenable to calculation with such a  
simple spreadsheet.

There are some interesting transfers. U16 for example:  
=1+1/4/5+1/8/7+1/9/8+1/8/7

I'd be curious to see just how repeatable a recount would be. An  
example like this illustrates just how difficult it can be to audit a  
hand count of a large STV election. I'd much prefer a published ballot  
file and counting program.