[EM] IRV proponents figure out how to make IRV precinct-summable

[Raph Frank]

2009/3/18 James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk>:
> I'm afraid there is a little more involved that your description would suggest because real voters do things you might never expect.
> But it has all already been done for public elections.  Just one example of which I have some knowledge.  In May 2007 in Scotland
> two different elections were held on the same day.  In the MMP elections (Scottish Parliament) the two votes were recorded by "X"s
> in separate columns on a combined ballot sheet.  In the STV-PR elections (local government - 32 councils) the preferential votes
> were recorded by "1, 2, 3" etc in one column, for as many or as few candidates as each voter wished.

Well, as the software improves, this would be less of a problem.
Also, I think one of the issues in Scotland was poor ballot design
which overloaded the ballot.  A better layout might have been two
separate ballots for each person, so it is obvious that they are
separate.

Abd's proposal is that lots of people would take images of the ballots
and each ballot would have an ID number added (after it is taken out
of the ballot box) for easy reference.

There would then be an official provisional file of all the ballots created.

Anyone would be allowed to challenge the official file.  You would
effectively give the ballot ID + the correct ballot info for each
disputed image.

The returning officer could then check them using the official ballot images.

If there is still a dispute, it can be brough to court for examination
of the original ballots themselves.

There could be a rule that you can only submit 10 challenges and if
20%+ of them are valid, your limit is increased by 5.