[EM] STV and weighted positional methods

[James Gilmour]

Kathy Dopp  > Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2009 7:05 PM
> All the same STV is incredibly complex to accurately count by 
> hand or by computer or spreadsheet as compared to other 
> alternative voting methods.

In fact, STV-PR is extremely easy to count accurately by hand, using nothing more than a pencil and paper for the calculations.  The
one exception is Meek STV which involves the iterative solving of equations.

None of the calculations in Integer STV, Gregory Method STV, Inclusive Gregory Method STV and Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method are
beyond the Primary 7 school level (age 12 years)  -  I know because I asked the Headmistress of our local primary school.  These
calculations (long division and multiplication) can all be done on paper, but a simple electronic calculator is a great help if you
are using rules that involve fractional transfer values.

It is not easy to automate the entire procedure from individual ballot preferences to result sheet by spreadsheet and no-one with
any experience of spreadsheets and computer programming would ever think of using spreadsheets for this purpose.  A set of linked
spreadsheets can be very useful for a Returning Officer conducting a manual count, because all you then need to do is enter the
counted numbers of ballot papers at each stage.  But the Electoral Reform Society made this whole process very easy many years ago,
before computers and spreadsheets were available, by devising a set of paper "calculation forms" for the various procedures.

In a large public election it is the logistics of handling the ballot papers and keeping track of the parcels that is main
consideration.  This can be done manually quite easily for Integer STV (Ireland), Gregory Method STV (Northern Ireland) and
Inclusive Gregory Method STV (Australia).  The number of times ballot papers may have to be sorted and the larger number of
differently valued parcels in Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method STV means computer processing is much the more practical approach
(scanning paper ballots and computer counting), but manual processing would still be possible  -  it would just take considerably
longer and be tiresome.

James


No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com 
Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.16/1928 - Release Date: 31/01/2009 20:03