[Election-Methods] New improved fla for vote counts to be reported for auditing IRV elections

[Kathy Dopp]

FYI,

After discussions today with the SF group of activists, I realized
that my prior fla in my IRV paper for the number of vote counts which
must be publicly reported in each precinct prior to randomly selecting
precincts to manually audited (corresponding to the number of possible
permutations of candidate orderings voters could select, assumes that
voters are allowed to rank from one up to all N candidates.

If voters are only allowed to rank say up to 3 candidates, as in the
SF IRV elections, then the formula changes to:

given:
R = the number of possible rankings or IRV rounds
N = the number of candidates in each election contest

the total number of permutations and the number of vote counts which
must be publicly reported for EACH auditable unit is (drum roll):

the sum from i = 0 to i = R-1 of N!/(i+N-R)!

That gives for San Francisco elections:

for 2 candidates, 15 vote counts need to be publicly reported for each
IRV election contest for EACH precinct prior to randomly selecting
precincts for auditing

for 9 candidates, 585 vote counts need to be publicly reported for
each IRV election contest for EACH precinct prior to randomly
selecting precincts for auditing

Not that IRV proponents seem to care about checking if the machine
vote counts are accurate or not, but when there are fairer voting
methods that actually solve the spoiler problem in all cases rather
than in just one case, and are far easier to manually audit and count,
the people who support IRV should think twice about whether any gains
are worth all the expense and effort of IRV counting methods or not.
-- 

Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author
Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a
Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in
exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body
and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote
Thomas Jefferson in 1816