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

[Kathy Dopp]

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 10:36 PM,
<election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com> wrote:
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> From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com>
> To: jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk,   "'EM Methods'"
>        <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
> Message-ID: <20100205212026.E90EA8DB0062 at zapata.dreamhost.com>
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> At 01:12 PM 2/5/2010, 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 D?il ?ireann election I quoted.
>
> That's correct; however, there is no practical
> way to predict which profiles are needed. Sorting
> the ballots into piles and subpiles until there
> is a separate pile for every profile strikes me
> as how it would be done. (or they could be sorted
> in sequence, according to the physical position
> of the marks, which would be faster, probably).
> Then the data from each pattern would be entered
> into the matching position on the spreadsheet.
>
>>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.
>
> The probability of making mistakes is not as
> stated, because there is a check on the
> spreadsheet data, there can be several checks.
> First of all, I'd first sort the ballots by first
> preference and transmit that data. This is merely
> preliminary, but those totals might decide the
> election. The sums should equal the number of ballots found.
>
> Then the piles would be sequenced and the totals
> for each particular pattern found. It may be more
> efficient to keep A>.>B separate from A>B,
> because there is less interpretation required.
> I.e., "Blank" simply becomes another candidate.
> That adds to the possibilities, for sure, but
> simplifies the actual sorting. Blank intermediary
> votes should be pretty rare with IRV, so this
> will not materially add to the data that must be transmitted.
>
> The spreadsheet could be transmitted raw, or it
> could be edited to remove empty rows (i.e,
> patterns with no ballots found matching). That
> reduces transmitted data but increases local
> processing and possibility for error. However, in
> either case, the check by summing remains. The
> check for subpatterns of each first choice is an
> additional error check. The first data
> transmitted could actually be used to shorten the
> process, i.e., there would be two reports from
> precincts: the first report with only first rank
> votes, a wait for central tabulation to have
> collected enough precincts to be able to advise
> on batch elimination, and then an additional
> transmission with all remaining relevant patterns


If the contest is close, you could have the poll workers wait at the
polling places a couple of days or a couple of weeks in some states,
while all the late counted absentee and provisional ballots are
verified for eligibility and then counted.

Is this really a practical plan?


>
> There is no doibt but that IRV can be counted,
> but the point is that it can get really complex
> and take a lot of time, when an election is close
> with many candidates. With more than a small
> handful of candidates, experience has shown that
> it can be a time-consuming and expensive process,
> done by hand. And very difficult to audit, even
> if done by computer. That's why the election
> security people here in the U.S., in general, don't like it.

To be publicly verifiably audit (without doing a 100% manual recount)
requires publishing all the counts for all the possible ballot
rankings or for all voters for each precinct or polling location for
each contest, assuming that an average citizen voter would be able to
figure out how to tally the counts from that information.

>
> What is done, in practice, is to collect and
> analyze ballot images. This has been done with
> preprocessing to collapse votes like A>,>B, but
> that's actually only a minor improvement and
> reduces transparency. If I'm correct, the

Yes, since the ballot images also need to be randomly selected for
auditing and in that case need a humanly readable identifier printed
on each ballot, which presents other administrative and privacy
problems.

> collection of the data has been done centrally,
> the equipment not being present at the voting
> precincts, so, in short, they truck the ballots
> to central tabulation. This creates other risks.

Yes.

>
>> > However, the problem with this is that a single error in a precinct
>> > can require, then, all precincts to have to retabulate.

Yes, and in many states, all the late-counted mail-in and provisional
ballots can force a retabulation unless the beginning of the initial
count waits until they are ready to count and does a centralized
count.

>>
>>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).

Yes. I can just picture all the ballots being transported to the state
capitol in each state for all elections that cross county lines.
Since I have yet to see a state that allows the public to oversee the
security of the transportation of voted ballots, that opens up many
possibilities for ballot tampering, ballot spoiling, ballot
substitution, ballot absconding, etc.

Truly could anyone dream up a worse voting method than IRV for
evisceration of election transparency and verifiability and
simplicity? Any other alternative method seems preferable.  I think
that the real reason for promoting IRV is to help voting vendors sell
an all-new round of voting equipment or to help sell the totally
insecurable Internet method of voting.

Since IRV does *not* solve the spoiler problem, and does *not* find
majority winners and fails more of Arrow's fairness criteria than
plurality, the only logical reason for employing it is to make vendors
money and ensure that elections can be fraudulently rigged with far
less chance of detection than with any other method IMO.

Kathy

>
> That's what's being done. What experience here
> shows is that, even centrally counted, errors
> happen in earlier rounds that then require
> recounting all later rounds. The possibility of
> this rises with the number of candidates and the closeness of the 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.
>
> I don't think it's true that it has been "without
> problems." There are and have been problems. But
> if IRV were an optimal method, it might be worth
> the trouble. For multiwinner STV, indeed, it
> might well be worth the trouble. But for
> single-winner? I don't think so. There are
> simpler methods that produce better results, by all objective measures.
>
> (Frankly, there is only one clearly objective
> measure, which is how a method performs in
> simulations, particularly with reasonable
> simulation of actual preference profiles -- full
> utility profiles -- and voting strategies as
> voters are known to use or are likely to use.
> "Election criteria," like the Condorcet
> Criterion, tend to be criteria that are
> intuitively satisfying, but that can actually
> fail completely and obviously under certain
> conditions, and a method failing a criterion may
> mean nothing if the failure is so rare and
> requires such unusual voting patterns that it
> will never be encountered under realistic
> conditions. Basically, how do we judge the
> criteria? And there are only two ways that I see,
> one is through utility analysis and the other
> through basic democratic principles, broadly
> accepted, such as the right of decision that is
> held by a majority; a majority of voters voting
> for a single proposition, with no opposing
> majority voting simultaneously for a conflicting
> proposition, must have the right to
> implementation. When there are multiple
> majorities there is not a simple question and
> there remains doubt as to a majority decision.)
>
>

-- 

Kathy Dopp
http://electionmathematics.org
Town of Colonie, NY 12304
"One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the
discussion with true facts."

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

Checking election outcome accuracy
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf