[EM] Ballot formats (Re: new simple legal strategy to get IRV)

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 10/09/2015 10:00 AM, Juho Laatu wrote:
> I just note that there can be also simple ballots like in
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_list (see the picture). If one
> wants to expand that to ranked ballots with high number of
> candidates, one could simply allow the voter to write multiple
> numbers in the ballot instead of only one. One could thus cast a
> ranked vote by writing few numbers, e.g. "23 74 74 5 234 321".
> 
> The ballot could be as small as in the picture and still allow
> ranking of e.g. 5 candidates.

Schulze also uses a similar ballot format in his proposal for STV-MMP,
e.g. http://m-schulze.9mail.de/schulze5.pdf page 6. The open list
article you linked to shows that it's possible to read number input
since e.g. the Finnish ballot has the voter write down the candidate
numbers of those he votes for, so having the voter fill out numbered
rankings shouldn't be a problem.

That gives two possible ways of setting up the ballot, now that I think
about it. The first would be like Schulze's, where the voter writes down
an 1 next to first place, 2 next to second, etc. The second would be a
table which says (using ASCII art here)


 Ranking              Candidate number
                      to be filled in
+------------------+ +---------------+
| 1st rank (best)  | |               |
+------------------+ +---------------+
| 2nd rank         | |               |
+------------------+ +---------------+
| 3rd rank         | |               |
=======================================
=========(more rows come here)=========
=======================================
| 20th rank        | |               |
+------------------+ +---------------+

where one assumes very few voters will rank beyond 20th rank. This could
be 40th or 80th depending on how many rows fit on the paper.

The dual approach (where candidate numbers are filled in) could be
better in the sense that the candidate numbers could have check digits
or be augmented by some other error-detecting code, and they could also
avoid ambiguous digits like 1 and 7. If the ballots are read by machine,
the machines could flag ballots they can't read for manual inspection.
On the other hand, having to look up candidate numbers is another step
of indirection for the voter and could make voting more of a hassle,
thus reducing turnout.

For equal rank, it'd be possible to expand the table like this:

 Ranking             Candidate numbers for this rank
                           to be filled in
+-----------------+ +----------------+----------------+----------------+
| 1st rank (best) | |                |                |                |
+-----------------+ +----------------+----------------+----------------+
| 2nd rank        | |                |                |                |
+-----------------+ +----------------+----------------+----------------+

.. etc., the idea being that the voter would fill in every candidate
he'd rank first in the cells of the first row. It is less intuitive,
though. People who are serious about accessibility might want to have
"expensive pencil" type single-purpose (not Turing-complete) voting
machines for printing to this format.

MJ or discrete rated systems could have a multi-page ballot where each
page corresponds to a different grade or rating, and the voter writes
down the candidate IDs for each page. For approval, there's just one
page. Continuous rated systems would pretty much have to use something
like Schulze's format, but instead of filling in numbers, would have
something to the effect of:

"Place a mark on the line corresponding to the rating you want to give.
Further to the right is better."

Candidate 1   worst |-------------------------------------------| best

Candidate 2   worst |-------------------------------------------| best

Candidate 3   worst |-------------------------------------------| best

Candidate 4   worst |-------------------------------------------| best
...
Candidate n   worst |-------------------------------------------| best