[EM] The critical importance of Precinct Summability.

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 08/12/2024 4:59 PM EDT Closed Limelike Curves <closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Chris: I agree with you that the importance of precinct summability is often exaggerated. If you tallied all results on election night, using two-way communication, this would fix the problem if you've received all ballots by election night (since you can post round-by-round results).

The two-way communication is not transparent and skeptics (or conspiracy nuts) will claim that the two-way communication is not secure.

Either way it's unnecessary if you have Precinct Summability.

> That said, it's not useless, because lots of US states don't do that. The main issue is whether states will in practice actually adopt practices required for safe IRV elections.

Hare RCV (IRV) will never be as transparent nor as secure as Condorcet RCV when the number of candidates exceeds 3 because it lacks Precinct Summability.  All other things equal, there will always be a difference in degree of transparency and to the degree of security/integrity of the election.  Condorcet will always (4+ candidates) have a property of transparency that Hare lacks and will always have a property of security/integrity that Hare lacks.

> So far, they haven't.

FairVote and RCVRC do not help.  The difference between misinformation and disinformation is whether they're drinking the Kool-Aid or they're serving the Kool-Aid.  FairVote and RCVRC are serving the Kool-Aid.

I'm sticking to my story: Precinct Summability exposed the Venezuelan election as stolen.  It didn't prevent it, but that's because of the strength and corruption of the government over the opposition.  And, in principle, if they didn't have precinct summability and kept the tabulation of the vote completely opaque (because, say, they required all the ballot data to be opaquely transported from polling places to the central tabulation location), then they could have stolen the election and none of us would be the wiser.


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