[EM] Ballot Data Format

Thu May 27 15:15:55 PDT 2021

Hi All,

Another source of inspiration could be the Pivot Libre project's Ballot
File Format. Documentation is hosted on GitHub pages.

https://pivot-libre.github.io/bff/

Issues and contributions can be made on GitHub.

https://github.com/pivot-libre/pivot-libre.github.io/issues

I'm interested in staying in the loop on any ranked ballot community
standards efforts. I don't have time to drive the conversation right now.

Whether or not the specifics of BFF are to the community's liking, I
recommend considering using a similar approach with GitHub as a
collaboration and website site hosting platform. I believe several
organizations have used this approach successfully for some fairly complex
standards.

Example:

https://cfconventions.org/index.html
https://github.com/cf-convention

All the best,

Carl

On Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:34 PM John Karr <brainbuz at brainbuz.org> wrote:

> As the author of Vote::Count, a standardized format for ballots would be
> a big plus. When I've been able to collect sample data, the first thing
> I need to do is convert it to my format. Currently Vote::Count has two
> formats, a text one for ranked ballots and a json/yaml format for range
> ballots. The documentation on my formats is here:
> https://metacpan.org/pod/Vote::Count::ReadBallots
>
> I'm not on Reddit, but I think creating a working group of people with
> an interest to propose a standard would be  a great idea, and I'm
> interested in helping.
>
> A standard format would allow creation of a library of data for which
> electowiki would seem to be a natural home.
>
> On 5/27/21 4:02 PM, election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com wrote:
>
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> > Today's Topics:
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> >     1. (no subject) (Rob Lanphier)
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 23:38:14 -0700
> > From: Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com>
> > To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> > Subject: [EM] (no subject)
> > Message-ID:
> >       <CAK9hOYn2T=ympC7gEd8wS_8S8yjzK==
> xsmEfNKWo99cBjaXDgA at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> >
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > There's an interesting discussion happening on reddit about ASCII
> > formats for aggregated ballot images.  I'll provide a deep link to my
> > comment here:
> >
> > <
> https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/nkm2cd/standardizing_cardinal_ballot_notation/gzls6pj/
> >
> >
> > What the original reddit poster (/user/jman722) made me realize is
> > that it's possible to come up with a format that works for both range
> > ballots and ranked ballots.  The range ballots can be on a scale of
> > 0-5, where 5 is "awesome", and 0 is "awful".  The ranked ballots can
> > be A>B>C.
> >
> > I'm going to use the example that the original reddit poster made:
> >
> > 12: Allie/5, Billy/5, Candace/4, Dennis/3, Edith/3, Frank/2, Georgie/1,
> Harold/0
> > 7: Allie/4, Billy/0, Candace/2, Dennis/3, Edith/1, Frank/0, Georgie/5,
> Harold/3
> > 5: Allie/0, Billy/3, Candace/2, Dennis/3, Edith/4, Frank/5, Georgie/3,
> Harold/4
> >
> > That format is good but not great.  It takes a careful eye to see that
> > Allie, Billy, Frank, and Georgie are the passionate favorites (earning
> > a "5" score), and another close look to see that Allie, Billy, Frank,
> > and Harold are listed as completely unacceptable (earning a "0" score)
> >
> > My old format that I used for my 1996 Perl script that I wrote and
> > published in The Perl Journal would express those ballots this way:
> >
> > 12: Allie=Billy>Candace>Dennis=Edith>Frank>Georgie>Harold
> > 7: Georgie>Allie>Dennis=Harold>Candace>Edith>Billy=Frank
> > 5: Frank>Edith=Harold>Billy=Dennis=Georgie>Candace>Allie
> >
> > With this format, it becomes clear that 12 voters really like Allie
> > and Billy and really don't like Harold.  The next 7 voters really like
> > Georgie, and really don't like Billy and Frank.  The remaining 5
> > voters really like Frank, but really dislike Allie.  One has to add up
> > 12+7+5 to realize there are 24 voters in this election.
> >
> > The ratings are stripped from my old 1996-ish format.  It only
> > provides the following parse tokens:
> >
> > [quantity]: [cand5yay] [> or =] [cand4good] [> or =] ... [cand0boo]
> >
> > It seems as though it would be possible to come up with a merged
> > format that would express the range ballots above like this:
> >
> > 12: Allie/5 =Billy/5 >Candace/4 >Dennis/3 =Edith/3 >Frank/2 >Georgie/1
> >Harold/0
> > 7: Georgie/5 >Allie/4 >Dennis/3 =Harold/3 >Candace/2 >Edith/1 >Billy/0
> =Frank/0
> > 5: Frank/5 >Edith/4 =Harold/4 >Billy/3 =Dennis/3 =Georgie/3 >Candace/2
> >Allie/0
> >
> > The ">", "=", and "," characters could all be optional delimiters
> > between the candidate/score tuples on each line (though at least one
> > of those three delimiters WOULD be required). If ">" or "=" is used as
> > a delimiter, then the candidates MUST be ordered by score (highest
> > score first). Candidate tokens can be one or more ASCII characters
> > ([A-Z] or [a-z]) OR the candidate token MUST start with a square
> > bracket ([) and end with the closing square bracket (]), and the
> > intervening text can be any unicode character (e.g. [Do?a Garc?a
> > M?rquez] or [Ximena Pe?a] or [???]) . Whitespace can be discarded, but
> > SHOULD be included for legibility.
> >
> > Linters could be created to deduplicate ballot lines, sort the
> > candidate by score on each line, convert commas to ">" and "=" (for
> > ranked ballot equivalents), and add whitespace for readability. They
> > could optionally normalize the candidates to a range of ASCII letters
> > (e.g. changing "Allie" to "A", "Billy" to "B", etc).
> >
> > The goal would be to make it useful for two people debating whether
> > the Condorcet criterion or the Monotonicity criterion is more
> > important. They could both easily crank out a set of ballots that
> > could be fed into either a ranked-ballot counter or a rated-ballot
> > counter. Having the candidate tuples sorted in each line makes it
> > clearer what the preferences were of the set of voters represented by
> > the given line.
> >
> > I think that parsers could be written for this format such that they
> > follow Postel's Law (a.k.a the "robustness principle"):
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
> >
> > To quote that^: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what
> > you accept from others"
> >
> > People trying to express ranked ballots could drop the scores, and
> > ONLY include ">" and "=" as a delimiter between candidates,  People
> > trying to express rated ballots could use commas (",") instead of ">"
> > and "=". Programmers trying to parse handcrafted scenarios could
> > figure out how to fill in the blanks.
> >
> > I'm tempted to write a reference parser for this, but first, what do
> > you all think?  Let the list know!  Let me know!  Let reddit know!
> > :-D
> >
> > Thanks
> > Rob
> >
> > p.s.  I'm thinking of calling my version "ABIF", standing for
> > "Aggregated Ballot Image Format".  I may just document it here:
> > https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/ABIF
> >
> >
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> > End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 202, Issue 7
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