[EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)

[Kathy Dopp]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM, James Gilmour
<jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Kathy Dopp  > Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 1:42 PM
>> My formula provides the more practical number of how many
>> profiles are allowed to be cast by voters and how many
>> profiles are needed if one wants to count the number of votes
>> cast for each profile and make IRV precinct-summable for an
>> actual election.
>
> But if you do not report the complete preference profiles, down the last preference position (whether or not it is relevant to the
> count), you reduce the transparency of the process.  The full ballot data should be published as soon as possible after the
> election.  To provide complete information in the smallest size, the STV ballot data should be published as preference profiles,
> i.e. COMPLETE preference profiles.  The BLT format is convenient for this.  The full ballot data from the 2007 STV-PR local
> government elections in the City of Glasgow (Scotland) were published on the City Council's website as very soon after the count
> closed on the day after polling.  They are still all there for inspection.

James, you are using a straw man argument with me, setting up a false
premise that I said something I never did, rather than responding to
my formula which is more broad and general than yours. I.e. your
formula is a subset of mine where r, the number of candidates voters
may rank is equal to the number of candidates. Recall it was Robert
who suggested collapsing and not reporting all of the exact
preferences specified by voters, not myself, although I agree with
Robert that if the number of candidates equals the number of rankings
allowed, it could be collapsed for any IRV counting method I've heard
of, although you say that there are methods I've never heard of where
it could not be collapsed.

To require, as you suggest that all election be administered in a way
that allows all voters to fully rank all candidates may sounds nice
and would eliminate one of the problems with IRV, but with so many
election contests on one ballot here in the US, it would be costly and
possibly impractical unless you insist on using inauditable, easily
hacked, electronic ballots and touchscreen devices rather than
auditable voter marked paper ballots.

As I said earlier, if paper ballots are required, the length of the
paper ballot must be unlimited if the number of candidates who can run
for office is unlimited and you want voters to be able to fully rank
(not that most voters would want to.)

Dealing with practical election administration issues seem to be very
low down on the totem pole for most electoral methods people it seems.

>
>
>> Obviously Condorcet counting methods are much simpler to make
>> precinct-summable than IRV, requiring far fewer number of
>> sums per precinct as the number of candidates increases.
>
> If you are going to do a manual sort of the ballots, then making three piles for each pair-wise comparison (A>B, B>A, neither
> ranked) would involve less work than sorting to complete preference profiles.  But if you have sensible processing equipment that
> task is trivial and the difference irrelevant.


Sorting ballots is not a logically coherent method of counting
Condorcet ballots James, so I'm not sure what you mean. Also, of
course three piles only works for the first round of sorting for an
IRV-type of count in the special case where there are three candidates
running for office, not for the general case of IRV and not for
Condorcet, so I have no idea what you're thinking about.

If you reread one of my recent emails, I describe the two methods for
handcounting IRV and the two methods for counting Condorcet.  The only
methods they have in common is to begin by sorting into all the unique
votes.  Sorting ballots into piles and confusing subpiles only works
for IRV and does not work for STV, except if there are no
transferrable votes or you want to cut up pieces of ballots or xerox
copies of ballots (what a confusing mess that would be.)


>
>
>> I think one thing that some election methods experts
>> sometimes fail to consider are the election administration
>> practicalities that are crucial to whether or not a method is
>> functionally practical to provide public oversight over.
>
> The practicalities of election administration are extremely important and as a returning officer for some elections, I am well aware
> of that.  But electoral administration must not be allowed to put artificial or "convenient" limitations on the democratic process.


Except in the case of such methods as IRV when the method is not only
wholly inconvenient and costly and virtually impossible to hand count
understandably and quickly and is also unfair and produces awful
outcomes.

A simpler method to administer is always preferable, other things
being equal, to a complex costly method such as IRV, but IRV does not
even provide any reason to use it since it fails more fairness
criteria than plurality, takes us backwards in election fairness and
voter rights, etc. as well as eviscerating election transparency for
the common person who doesn't use spreadsheets, etc.

>
>
>> I am fully aware that it is voting system technology, costs,
>> and the increasing impracticality of manually auditing the
>> election if the full range of preference profiles is allowed,
>> if one is making an attempt to use paper ballots, that limits
>> the number of choices a voter may fill out.  I've studied
>> this issue for 7 years now.
>
> We have absolutely no problems with any of this in our STV public elections in the UK.  We always take all our paper ballots to one
> counting centre for each electoral district.


The UK is much much smaller than the US. The UK has far fewer issues
and contests on each ballot than the US. The UK has one central
government that administers elections, unlike the US which has 50
separate states, etc. etc. Need I go on?

>  In Northern Ireland, the ballots are sorted and counted manually, under scrutiny.  In
> Scotland in 2007 we used optical scanning equipment and OCR to produce the vote vector for each ballot and the vote vectors were
> then consolidated into preference profiles for the STV counting program.  All the ballot handling was done under scrutiny.  There
> are always some who are unhappy with the results (defeated candidates and their supporters!), but the process has not been
> challenged.
>
> James
>
-- 

Kathy Dopp

Town of Colonie, NY 12304
phone 518-952-4030
cell 518-505-0220

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/

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 --- Post-election audit sampling
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf