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

[Juho Laatu]

> On 11 Oct 2015, at 01:36, robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.

Actually I was thinking about the process of checking the votes, and keeping the vote casting process fully manual. If machines would be used in casting the vote, I might prefer (at least in the Finnish tradition) machines that are like simple mechanic typewriters that allow the voter to type some numbers on the ballot paper. This approach could save some votes that would be otherwise rejected. But that may not be necessary or the best approach since people may prefer manual voting (partly because of the tradition), and only very few votes will be rejected anyway. (If some numbers cause too many problems, one could use also Kristofer Munsterhjelm's trick and not use some numbers that might cause confusion.)

> 
>>  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 waas thinking about some STV style multi-winner methods where it makes sense to store the votes one by one and not sum them up in a matrix (as would be practical with typical single winner ranked Condorcet methods).

Bubbles and slots would work too. I just ended up on this line because I started from the idea of using as simple ballots as possible. In Finland votes are counted twice manually to make sure that possible alternative interpretations of the ballots will be pointed out.

> 
>> 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?

In Finland the idea is that votes are counted locally right after the election, which means that there is plenty of local workforce available, and the process can be real quick. This approach would scale also to India and 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.

The second count in Finland is called a "checking count". It will be done always (maybe the next day), and usually there is no need to come back to the votes after that (not locally nor centrally).

> 
> 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.

Bias-lessness is achieved in Finland by inviting representatives of all parties to take part in the vote counting process. I guess the tradition is to not to even start making biased interpretations.

STV is unfortunately not as summable as e.g. Condorcet. One may lose also some privacy and introduce some risk of coercion and vote buying by recording and distributing ranked votes to the central authority (and who knows even publishing them). I have no good foolproof solution for that right now. Risks to be estimated and appropriate protective measures to be taken (or just stay in some simpler methods).

Juho


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> r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com
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> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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