[EM] Report on the 2006 Burlington Mayoral election.

Mon Jan 5 14:45:14 PST 2009

The ballots were quite sensible.

The biggest category was the 5 candidates
category. Good.

The second category was the 2 candidates
category. When looking at these votes one
can see that they focused on the strongest
candidates (C02, C03, C04). Good.

The third category was the 1 candidate
category. Here we lost some information.
Bullet votes that were given to the third
strongest candidate were exhausted before
the last round. This was maybe the worst
case when looking at how well people were
able to vote. The ballots were quite good
anyway. People seemed quite capable of
indicating their preferences.

Juho

--- On Mon, 5/1/09, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:

> From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com>
> Subject: [EM] Report on the 2006 Burlington Mayoral election.
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Monday, 5 January, 2009, 6:22 AM
> Since Burlington has made ballot images available, and since
> we only have, from summary results, part of the story of
> this election, I decided to analyze the images. I'm
> writing this as I do the work, both as a way to record what
> I find and to report it. I will interpret the data
> elsewhere, so, unless I make mistakes, there shouldn't
> be any controversy about this.
> 
> There are instructions that Burlington gives for loading
> the data into a spreadsheet. The votes are contained in a
> series of .prm files. Each record begins with a precinct and
> ballot number, but, I noticed, in some cases these are
> duplicated, they could represent different counting batches
> or some other unexplained anomaly.
> 
> In the Excel file I compiled, there were 9865 records,
> which agrees with the total number of ballots as reported.
> Burlington reports 77 invalid ballots.
> 
> I'm not going to report the IRV results, per se, those
> are available at
> http://www.burlingtonvotes.org/20060307/2006%20Burlington%20Mayor%20Round..htm
> 
> I find 77 ballots with no choice at all; as far as the
> ballot images are concerned, these are blank. (In an audit,
> it's not impossible for some of these ballots to be
> found valid, it depends on rules. For example, no ballots
> showed a blank first choice and then some later preference.
> That's unlikely, this is a known and reasonably common
> error.)
> 
> This leaves 9788 ballots. The software they used was
> general-purpose STV software, I believe it's open
> source, so the report mentions the Droop quota, which is a
> simple majority of the valid ballots, if we assume that even
> overvoted ballots are valid: so the software is seeking,
> until it's found or all but two candidates are left,
> 4895 votes as a majority.
> 
> Under the Burlington rules, according to the instructions
> at
> http://www.burlingtonvotes.org/20060307/manualverification.php
> , a ballot with equal ranking (two or more candidates at the
> same rank) is "exhausted" if more than one of the
> candidates is not eliminated when that rank is reached.
> Quite a number of voters overvoted in first rank, which will
> result in immediate exhaustion. I'm going to list all
> these initially exhausted ballots
> 
> 71 000071-00-0640 10006 1  C01=C02 C03
> 31 000031-00-0172 10002 1  C01=C04 C02 C05 C03
> 42 000042-00-0832 10003 1  C01=C04
> 71 000071-00-0646 10006 1  C01=C05 C02=C04 C03 C06
> 71 000071-00-0641 10006 1  C01=C06 C04
> 31 000031-00-0397 10002 1  C03=C04
> 41 000041-00-0233 10003 1  C03=C04
> 41 000041-00-0242 10003 1  C03=C04
> 21 000021-00-0013 10001 1  C03=C06 C05 C01 C02
> 41 000041-00-0379 10003 1  C04=C06 C02 C05
> 
> The candidate names, for reference, are this:
> .CANDIDATE C01, "Louie The Cowman Beaudin"
> .CANDIDATE C02, "Kevin J. Curley" (Republican)
> .CANDIDATE C03, "Bob Kiss" (Progressive)
> .CANDIDATE C04, "Hinda Miller" (Democrat)
> .CANDIDATE C05, "Loyal Ploof"
> .CANDIDATE C06, "Write-ins"
> 
> Overall usage of ranks:
> 5 candidates ranked: 2609.
> 	of these, a write-in was in:
> 		5th rank: 96 (plus one C05 = C06 vote)
> 		4th rank: 67 (plus two C05 = C06 votes)
> 		3rd rank: 49 (plus two C05 = C06 votes)
> 		2nd rank: 38
> 		1st rank: 25.
> 	excluding votes with a write-in, simply or as an overvote,
> 2330 voters ranked all five candidates.
> 
> (There were five candidates on the ballot, and five ranks
> to be expressed, thus full ranking was allowed even if the
> voter ranks a write-in.)
> 
> 4 candidates ranked: 348.
> 3 candidates ranked: 1770.
> 2 candidates ranked: 3256.
> 1 candidate ranked:  1806.
> 
> 1st rank votes (overvotes are listed with the first
> candidate in sequence):
> C01: 119 plus 5 overvotes,  C01=C02, C01=C04, C01=C04,
> C01=C05, C01=C06.
> C02: 2609
> C03: 3809 plus 4 overvotes,  C03=C04, C03=C04, C03=C04,
> C03=C06.
> C04: 3106 plus 1 overvote,  C04=C06
> C05: 57
> C06: 78.
> 
> 2nd rank votes:
> C01: 608 plus 2 overvotes: C01=C03=C04=C05, C01=C04
> C02: 1427 plus 3 overvotes: C02=C03, C02=C04, C02=C05
> C03: 2444 plus 1 overvote: C03=C06
> C04: 2877
> C05: 456
> C06: 163
> 
> Total first and second rank votes (neglecting overvotes):
> C01: 727
> C02: 4036
> C03: 6253
> C04: 5983
> C05: 513
> C06: 241
> 
> Were this a Bucklin election, and if the voters voted the
> same pattern in the first two ranks, two candidates would
> have gained a majority: C03 and C04, the Progressive and the
> Democrat. C03, as with IRV, would have prevailed. No claim
> is made, however, that voting patterns would remain the
> same. (This will be discussed in further analysis.)
> 
> Breakdown of votes by number of ranks expressed:
> 
> 1 rank:
> C01: 32 (26.9% of valid votes for C01) plus 1 overvote,
> C01=C04
> C02: 767 (17.4%)
> C03: 454 (11.9%) plus 3 overvotes, all C03=C04
> C04: 536 (17.3%)
> C05: 5 (1.0%)
> C06: 8 (3.3%)
> 
> 2 ranks:
> C01>C02: 10
> C01>C03: 6
> C01>C04: 2
> C01>C05: 1
> C01>C06: 1
> (C01=C02>C03: 1)
> (C01=C06>C04: 1)
> 
> C02>C01: 89
> C02>C01=C03=C04=C05: 1
> C02>C03: 203
> C02>C04: 296
> C02>C05: 19
> C02>C06: 28
> 
> C03>C01: 33
> C03>C02: 187
> C03>C04: 1095
> C03>C05: 39
> C03>C06: 35
> 
> C04>C01: 18
> C04>C02: 269
> C04>C02=C03: 1
> C04>C03: 870
> C04>C05: 19
> C04>C06: 10
> 
> C05>C01: 0
> C05>C02: 5
> C05>C03: 2
> C05>C04: 3
> C05>C06: 0
> 
> C06>C01: 0
> C06>C02: 5
> C06>C03: 4
> C06>C04: 3
> C06>C05: 0
> 
> 3 ranks (by first preference):
> C01: 18
> C02: 451
> C03: 762
> C04: 499 (plus one overvote C04=C06)
> C05: 14
> C06: 25
> 
> 4 ranks (by first preference):
> C01: 9 (plus two overvotes  C01=C04, C01=C05)
> C02: 69
> C03: 164 (plus one overvote C03=C06)
> C04: 91
> C05: 4
> C06: 8
> 
> 5 ranks (by first preference):
> C01: 40
> C02: 686
> C03: 1040
> C04: 793
> C05: 24
> C06: 25
> 
> Analysis of first preference overvotes by involved
> candidate, compared to valid first pref. vote for that
> candidate.:
> 
> C01: 5/119	4.2%
> C02: 1/2609	0.0%
> C03: 4/3809	0.1%		
> C04: 6/3106	0.2%
> C05: 1/57	1.8%
> C06: 3/78	3.8%
> 
> 5-rank voters by first ranked candidate, subsorted by last
> ranked candidate:
> 
> C01>>C02: 8
> C01>>C03: 2
> C01>>C04: 11
> C01>>C05: 17
> C01>>C06: 2 (bottom ranked write-in!)
> 
> C02>>C01: 189
> C02>>C03: 95
> C02>>C04: 185
> C02>>C05: 183
> C02>>C06: 34
> 
> C03>>C01: 342
> C03>>C02: 330
> C03>>C04: 151
> C03>>C05: 193
> C03>>C06: 24
> 
> C04>>C01: 277
> C04>>C02: 227
> C04>>C03: 63
> C04>>C05: 192 (plus one overvote C04>>C05=C06)
> C04>>C06: 33
> 
> C05>>C01: 6
> C05>>C02: 8
> C05>>C03: 2
> C05>>C04: 7
> C05>>C06: 1
> 
> C06>>C01: 2
> C06>>C02: 4
> C06>>C03: 2
> C06>>C04: 6
> C06>>C05: 11
> 
> One statistic I'd like to compile that I haven't:
> there were a huge number of "marks on the ballot,"
> the large majority of which were not officially counted.
> Just for starters, we have, among the voters for the top two
> in first preference, 1833 voters who *fully ranked*, so at
> least four times that number of votes were not counted from
> them.
> 
> The total number of spoiled or blank ballots (blanks plus
> overvotes in first preference) was 77 apparently blank plus
> 10 overvotes in first rank (which totally spoils the ballot,
> even if there were lower preferences listed).
> 
> Corrections appreciated.
> 
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see
> http://electorama.com/em for list info