[Election-Methods] voting research

[Bob Richard]

Kathy,

I didn't write the comments you respond to below. I don't have any of 
the previous posts available to me so I can't look up who did.

I'm also going to be away from email for tne next two weeks.

--Bob Richard

Kathy Dopp wrote:

>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:35:49 -0700
>> From: Bob Richard <lists001 at robertjrichard.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] voting research
>> To: Election Methods <election-methods at electorama.com>
>>
> 
>> I suggested that since the simulations showed that IRV was hard to
>> manipulate, the usual cases were close to the phase transition where
>> things get hard in the average case.
> 
> Bob,
> 
> The use of simulations to "show" anything is usually looked at with
> skepticism among degreed statisticians or mathematicians - perhaps
> since each simulation can depend on assumptions which may not be
> stated explicitly.  I would think that your paper would be taken more
> seriously if it did not entirely depend on simulations and used proofs
> or mathematically-derived formulas instead.  To disprove a hypothesis
> is of course the easiest, since it merely requires citing one
> counter-example.
> 
> That said, I have used simulations myself to show that the patterns
> produced by the 2004 presidential exit polls in Ohio were not
> consistent with the "exit poll response bias" hypothesis that
> pollsters claimed produced the discrepancies; and also I have used
> simulations to generate counter-examples  (there were countably
> infinite counterexamples) to the hypothesis of The Election Science
> Institute and several statisticians, including a former President of
> the ASA, used to incorrectly claim that the pattern of Ohio's exit
> poll discrepancies were inconsistent with vote fraud.  (Vote fraud in
> Ohio's 2004 presidential election has been virtually proven now with
> concrete ballot evidence, suspicious destruction of evidence that a
> court required to be preserved, and other concrete evidence, and is
> back in court again.)
> 
> 
>> Under certainty, with individual voters, manipulation is easy (because
>> with the number of candidates given, the number of possible ranked
>> ballots turns into a constant).
> 
> Again, the number of possible ranked ballots is a *huge* number as the
> number of candidates increases.  Please cite my paper which provides
> the  exact formula for the possible number of ranked ballots on its
> page 6:
> 
> where N= the number of candidates, and R= the number of ballot choices
> voters are permitted to make (R would be = to N if voters are allowed
> to rank all candidates) then
> 
> the number of possible unique ranked ballots (assuming partial
> rankings are also allowed) is:
> 
> the sum from i=0 to i=R-1  N!/(N-R+i)!
> 
> Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting- 17 Flaws and 3 Benefits
> June 10, 2008, Version #2– updated June 25, 2008 and Friday, August 01, 2008
> By Kathy Dopp, MS Mathematics
> http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf
> 
> It might be interesting for persons reading your dissertation to have
> my research report cited as a resource.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Kathy
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>