[EM] IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)

[Juho]

Yes, this makes sense from practical elections point of view. With  
current computer/communications technology the amount of data in IRV  
votes should not be a big problem.

When I compare the approach of sending ballot images (as in IRV with  
centralized counting) to sending just the pairwise comparison matrix  
(as possible in most Condorcet methods) my first concern is privacy  
related. If the actual ballot images are distributed widely and maybe  
made public that increases the possibility of vote buying and  
coercion. Of course on the other hand making ballot images available  
to all may increase the trust of the voters on the system since voters  
can then themselves easily check if their vote is included in the  
lists. (Sufficient trust can however typically be achieved also by  
other means.) It may be wiser in most cases to read (=to digital  
format) and store the original ballots close to the original polling  
stations than to send them to some central location (for reading and/ 
or for storage).

When sending all the collected ballot information to the central vote  
counting location one could in principle use the very familiar  
"standard EM format" where similar votes are collected in one row, as  
in "34: A>B>C". In Burlington votes were recorded (in one of the  
files) as "000001-00-0008, 1) C01,C04,C02,C05,C03". I guess the  
beginning part of this line is sufficient to identify the actual paper  
ballot or other record that will be kept for later checking. This  
Burlington format where every vote has a separate row is better than  
the "standard EM format" because of the mentioned better ability to  
check the actual ballots afterwards. The required space should not be  
a problem although probably there will be quite a number of identical  
ballots (and some space could be saved that way). In Burlington there  
were almost 9000 votes and out of these the sizes of the biggest piles  
of identical votes were 800, 680 and 506. There were less than 400  
different kind of ballots in Burlington.

Juho



On Feb 5, 2010, at 8:12 PM, James Gilmour wrote:

> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  > Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 4:50 PM
> <CUT>
>> Practically speaking, I'd assume, the precincts would be provided
>> with a spreadsheet showing the possible combinations, and they would
>> report the combinations using the spreadsheet, transmitting it. So
>> some cells would be blank or zero. With 5 candidates on the ballot,
>> the spreadsheet has gotten large, but it's still doable. What happens
>> if preferential voting encourages more candidates to file, as it
>> tends to do? 23 candidates in San Francisco? Even with three-rank
>> RCV, it gets hairy.
>
> Respectfully, I would suggest this would NOT be a wise way to  
> collect the data.  As I pointed out in my e-mail that correctly listed
> the maximum possible number of preference profiles for various  
> numbers of candidates, the actual number of preference profiles in
> any election (or any one precinct) with a significant number of  
> candidates, will be limited by the number of voters.  Further,
> because some (many) voters will choose the same profiles of  
> preferences, the actual number of preference profiles will likely be
> even lower  -  as in the Dáil Éireann election I quoted.
>
> Thus a spreadsheet containing all possible preference profiles would  
> be unnecessarily large and the probability of making mistakes
> in data entry would likely be greater than if each precinct recorded  
> only the numbers for each profile actually found in that
> precinct.
>
> <CUT>
>
>> There is a way to avoid such massive reporting, which is to report
>> interactively, which is what is done in Australia. Only one set of
>> totals is reported from a precinct at a time, the totals for the
>> current round. (which can be just uncovered votes due to eliminations
>> that have been reported to the precinct from central tabulation.)
>>
>> However, the problem with this is that a single error in a precinct
>> can require, then, all precincts to have to retabulate.
>
> Yes, this "distributed counting" would work.  But there is an even  
> simpler solution  -  take all the ballots to one counting centre
> and then sort and count only the ballots that are necessary to  
> determine the winner (or winners in an STV-PR election).  That what
> has been done for public elections in Ireland and the UK for many  
> decades and it works well without problems.  But I do appreciate
> that is far too simple and practical a solution and it suffers from  
> NMH.
>
> James Gilmour
>
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