[EM] Legacy IRV limitations

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

On 12/16/2023 6:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
 > On 2023-12-16 13:44, C.Benham wrote:
 >> Why do at least several US Americans here think there is something
 >> problematic and/or weird about allowing both quite
 >> a large number of candidates on the ballot and voters to strictly rank
 >> exactly as many of them as they wish?
 >
 > I guess it's partly that some US locations do this de facto anyway (e.g.
 > some places using IRV only lets the voters rank three candidates). And I
 > *think* that's due to legacy hardware? Optical scan machines that can
 > only read bubbles, and mechanical ones that can only read a certain
 > number of holes.

One reason for limiting ranking to just 3 "choice" levels is the issue 
of "ballot real estate."  Specifically, more choice levels take up more 
ballot space.  That's a big issue in U.S. elections where there are so 
many election contests.

Otherwise, when there are more than 3 candidates, the number of choice 
columns interacts with the issue of "overvotes."

It's the FairVote organization that promotes the myth that IRV cannot 
handle "overvotes."

Apparently FairVote does this to allow using old data from Australian 
elections to certify new or revised IRV software.

Australia previously, before machine counting of ballots became 
available, counted their ranked-choice paper ballots manually, by 
stacking ballots in piles.  (That's what I've read.)

To speed up that manual counting, apparently Australia adopted the 
shortcut of stacking ballots according to which candidate is highest 
ranked after removing eliminated candidates.

That shortcut means that during each counting round only a single stack 
of ballots needs to be looked at, and sorted, based on which candidate 
has become the newly highest-ranked candidate (after the latest 
elimination).

An important part of this shortcut is to reject/dismiss/ignore any 
ballot when there is no longer just one highest-ranked candidate. 
That's probably when the term "overvote" appeared.

In turn, this is why FairVote promotes the myth that when there are only 
three "choice" columns each choice column can have only one mark.

If there are only three choice columns and a voter wants to indicate 
that one particular candidate is worse than all other candidates, and 
there are 5 or more candidates, all but the most-disliked candidate need 
to be ranked at choice levels "first," "second," and "third."

Now that election officials in the United States and Australia count 
paper ballots using machines that read ballots, it's time to at least 
question this legacy limitation of not allowing "overvotes."  And 
hopefully we can soon abandon this legacy limitation.

For clarification, in Australia a voter writes a number inside a box 
located next to each candidate's name.  Software can recognize those 
handwritten numbers as reliably as a person, yet much faster.  When 
there is uncertainty a photographic image of the ballot can be displayed 
on multiple computer screens for verification from several humans.

This limitation of not ranking more than one candidate at the same 
choice level is due to a lack of ballot data (including results) against 
which new software can be verified.

It's time to end this ridiculous limitation.

Part of my frustration comes from the fact that Portland Oregon recently 
adopted counting rules that are even worse than just ignoring ballots 
with "overvotes."

With "advice" from the FairVote-controlled "Ranked Choice Voting 
Resource Center" the Portland election officials chose to skip over 
overvotes instead of dismissing the remainder of the ballot.

This means a voter who ranks candidates A and B as their "second choice" 
and candidate C as their "third choice" will get their ballot counted as 
support for candidate C even if candidates A and B have not been 
eliminated.  Yet ranking candidate C higher than A and B is exactly the 
opposite(!) of what the voter clearly intended!

As a reminder there is a simple way to correctly count such "overvotes." 
  Just pair up the ballot with equivalent similar ballots during that 
counting round.  Specifically, if two ballots rank candidates A and B as 
equally preferred, one of those ballots goes to support candidate A and 
the other ballot goes to support candidate B (during this counting round).

Now that we have machines and software to handle the correct counting of 
"overvotes," this extra "effort" does not impose any significant delay, 
or any significant increase in electricity to power the computer for a 
few extra milliseconds.  It does require extra effort from the 
programmer who writes the code, but that just involves extra effort from 
one person for a few hours.  (And if they don't know how to write that 
code they can copy from open-source software that correctly does this 
counting.)

To repeat, the only reason for the legacy of dismissing "overvotes" is 
that we lack certified ballot data against which to certify upgraded 
software.

Allowing overvotes will make it possible to meaningfully rank more than 
6 candidates using only 5 or 6 choice columns.

(A complication is whether an unranked candidate is ranked at the bottom 
printed choice level, or lower than all ranked candidates.  And this 
interacts with the complication of how to rank a candidate who is a 
write-in candidate on someone else's ballot.)

Limiting ranked choice ballots to 6 choice columns is reasonable, even 
when the election contest has 10 or more candidates.  But doing so does 
require correctly counting 2 or more candidates at the same "choice" level.

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy


On 12/16/2023 6:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> On 2023-12-16 13:44, C.Benham wrote:
>>
>> Why do at least several US Americans here think there is something 
>> problematic and/or weird about allowing both quite
>> a large number of candidates on the ballot and voters to strictly rank 
>> exactly as many of them as they wish?
>>
> 
> I guess it's partly that some US locations do this de facto anyway (e.g. 
> some places using IRV only lets the voters rank three candidates). And I 
> *think* that's due to legacy hardware? Optical scan machines that can 
> only read bubbles, and mechanical ones that can only read a certain 
> number of holes.
> 
> I'm not sure, though.
> 
>> I prefer Smith//Condorcet, but accept that that is more complex to 
>> explain and sell and probably the most approved candidate
>> will nearly always be in the voted Smith set.
> 
> Do you mean Smith//Approval?
> 
> -km
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info