[EM] Ballot design (new simple legal strategy to get IRV)

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 10/10/15 6:17 PM, Juho Laatu wrote:
> I believe computer recognition might work well enough to at least provide assistance to the humans by helping them recording the numbers. For example I might read the numbers myself first, and then check if the computer has the same opinion.

that means you have to "price check" your paper ballot before 
surrendering it to the ballot box.  does not seem to me to be a simple 
and direct procedure.

>   If yes, then I press enter to proceed to the next ballot and accept computer's interpretation of the ballot. This would be "computer assisted counting".

yeah, but we should have a reasonably secure method to tabulate ballots 
and get "summable" results at each precinct on the evening of the 
election just after polls close.  it should be virtually flawless if 
every voter marked their ballot to within, say, 90% of "par" (to use a 
golfing term).  this is quite doable for oval or round "bubbles" or 
"slots" or other simple binary marking geometries.  OCR is not safe 
enough without "human assisted counting" which i think should be totally 
avoided unless there is a mandated recount.

> I note that some ballots might contain numbers 1 and 7, and another ballot might contain numbers 1 and 7 as well, but the first 1 and the latter 7 might look exactly the same. One would need to make the interpretation based on seeing also the other numbers on the ballot. A different looking 7 would cause the 1 to be interpreted as 1 in the first ballot. The machines should be smart enough to take also this into account. Or alternatively they would just give up and leave the interpretation of these two ballots to humans.

would this work for an election in, say, India?  with something like 
10^9 ballots?

recounts are one thing.  and a nationwide recount in the U.S. would be 
truly a massive and messy thing.  this is one reason why the Electoral 
College has some supporters (which i am not).  if, in 2000, there would 
have been a knock-down, drag-out recount fight between Bush and Gore, at 
least the fight would have been contained in Florida.

but in the normal vote counting and tabulation in a governmental 
election in a democracy, it should be routinely done with mindless (and 
bias-less) machines, it should be precinct summable (with precinct 
results completely transparent to the media and to partisans), and it 
should be decided on the evening of the election unless it's very close 
or there are other problems calling for a recount.


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r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."