[EM] STV and weighted positional methods

[Raph Frank]

Will take a look.  That seems pretty paranoid.

> That is your opinion which is very different than the beliefs of the
> founding fathers of the United States who tried to set up a system of
> checks and balances whereby the public had to trust no one.
>
> Blind trust is not a principle that is conducive to good democracy.

I am not suggesting blind trust.  However, assuming that every
programmer who could convert the ballot list into a result would just
let it slide is completely unreasonable.

If the government tried to faked it, a large number of programmers
would code up their own counting algorithm just to see if it was true.

I would be more concerned that the ballot data was faked/inaccurate.
However, the integrity of that data has little to do with the counting
method.

> So you agree with what I said, to verify the integrity of an STV
> election an ordinary citizen would have to be able to observe a
> publicly held 100% hand count.

I am not entirely sure your point.  In plurality, they would have to
observe the count too.

In any case, I like Abd Lomax's ballot imaging proposal for
verification.  Images of all the ballots would be published on the
internet and people could then process them as desired.

Each candidate + others present at the counting station would use
digital cameras to image the ballots.

In any case, I think that once there is an agreed ballot list/file,
then the actually algorithm to process the ballots into a result is
not as important.

If the government tries to fake the results, every independent person
who checked the ballots would complain ... loudly.

> False - not if you want to avoid having your vote sometimes cause your
> 1st choice to lose and not if you want to avoid having your last
> choice candidate (who may also be the last choice of a majority of
> voters) sometimes win because not all voters' second, ... choices were
> counted in an equal and timely way.

Reasonable doesn't mean perfect.  Some people vote on the basis of
party and some people vote on the basis of how they like different
candidates.

PR-STV allows both types of votes (and all in between) to participate
in the same election, while still maintaining a PR result.

>>The issues with IRV are considerably lessened with the switch to multi-seat elections.
>
> 100% FALSE statement.  Just read some of the information that is
> available to you.  STV exacerbates the problems of IRV because it is
> IRV but applied with even more complexity and inequity.

It is more complex.  However, it is still equal.  You vote is allowed
to move around in accordance with your instructions (as given in your
ranking).