[EM] Question on RCV/IRV multi-seat method used in Minneapolis

[James Gilmour]

> Kathy Dopp  > Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 11:17 AM
> I think I've figured it out. Few persons on this list seems 
> to mind if an election method is incredibly complex and 
> inconvenient to manually count or virtually impossible to 
> manually audit in a way that the public can verify without 
> doing a 100% hand count (and thus is difficult to ensure 
> accurate and timely counts), but this method's description 
> has been overly simplified and incompletely described where 
> I've seen it posted.
> 
> Admittedly, the publicly verifiable accuracy and integrity of 
> the counts are my primary concern in evaluating any method, 
> followed by fairness and ease of election administration and 
> perhaps the other ten tenants of elections that I wrote about 
> in a recent LWV, SLC article.

Kathy and All
Kathy didn't see my posts yesterday because I sent only to the list and she receives only the daily digest.  We've sorted that out.

Kathy's comments above indicate an interesting difference of concerns.  Precinct counting has not been practised in the UK (or
Ireland ?) for a VERY long time, if ever.  All the precinct ballot boxes are sealed (each candidate or their agent can attach their
won seal) and transported securely to the counting centre for the relevant electoral district.  The counts are conducted by staff
recruited by the independent Returning Officer and the whole process takes place under the scrutiny of the candidates and their
agents.  Mistakes are sometimes (quite rarely) made during the count, but the public trust in that part of the procedure is high.
In the UK postal votes (absent votes) must be delivered by the close of polling on polling day, so there is no delay to determining
the result while absent votes are added days after all the local, in-person votes have been counted.

The rules for STV-PR elections used for the Dáil Éireann and in Malta were devised for manual counting, but involve a random element
in the selection of ballot papers to transfer a candidate's surplus.  The Gregory Method rules used for STV-PR elections in Northern
Ireland remove that random element, but still allow manual counting.  The arithmetic involved in fractional transfers is trivial  -
the more difficult part is the logistics of keeping proper track of the parcels and sub-parcels of ballot papers as successive
transfers are made.  That, however, is just a matter of good layout of the facilities and sound administration  -  there is a wealth
of experience to draw on.  All the operations in the counting hall are open to the scrutiny of the candidates and their agents.  The
ballot papers are sorted and check-sorted and counted and check-counted at each stage of the multi-stage process.  At the end of
each stage the Returning Officer can instruct a recount of that stage and a candidate can request a recount of that stage.

At the 2007 elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly (108 members, 6 elected from each of 18 electoral districts), the numbers of
ballot papers counted for the 18 electoral districts varied from 30,000 to 50,000.  The counts started at 9.00 am on the morning
after polling day.  The first three hours of each count would be taken up with reconciliation of the contents of each ballot box
with the polling clerk's returns for the relevant precinct.  The STV count proper would then get underway.  Many candidates would
know they had been elected, and some would know they had been excluded, by the end of the first day of counting.  The count would
resume the following day, with a smaller counting team, when most counts would be concluded by midday, with the longer counts
finishing mid-afternoon.

The trust in the counting procedures developed when nearly all UK elections were by FPTP (simple plurality) in single-member
electoral districts (one "X" per ballot paper).  We have been happy to transfer that trust to more complex voting procedures, and
our trust has not been misplaced.  Our principal concern has been to get rid of a voting system that wastes around 50% of the votes
at every election and leaves very large numbers of those who do vote without representation in the UK Parliament or on their local
Council.  We have made some progress in this direction: we imposed STV-PR on Ireland in 1920, revived it in Northern Ireland in
1973, chose a PR system for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly in 1999, and implemented STV-PR for local government
elections in Scotland in 2007.

James


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