[EM] Vote and count conservation laws

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 9/16/22 05:05, Forest Simmons wrote:
> As a mathematician I love formal analogies among apparently disparate 
> fields of inquiry ... the greater the apparent disparities, the more 
> interesting ... and the greater the potential for cross fertilization!

I still find it very hard to extract useful information from any of 
that. But then I have got Richard plonked for a reason :-) With my email 
client automatically ignoring his posts, I don't have to wrack my brain 
parsing them.

I wonder if any of the early STV theoreticians focused very much on the 
count, because I see this sort of "algorithm-based approach" (where 
exactly how the algorithm works matters) both in Richard's posts and 
James Gilmour's program instruction view of ranked ballots.

It's very different from my "ranked ballots are preferences, and 
criteria that are used to evaluate voting methods are entirely 
implementation agnostic" view -- which I have the impression is a later 
American perspective, although I couldn't say just how I've come to that 
impression.

-km