Hi, Warren, and thanks for your response. > The > inconvenience might be the real killer obstacle here.--true.. > definitely a worry. > > --Australia makes rank ordering all candidates on all races, > compulsory for every voter (and voting also is compulsory).
Good point. I hadn't thought of that. > --well, the govt will post on the bulletin board, not IMAGES of the ballot, > but merely an electronic record of the CONTENT of the ballots. I'm talking about "marking the ballot" by filling in bubbles, not by scribbling on it. There may be enough down-ballot contests in many elections (at least in the U. S.) that the vote-buyer could instruct a voter to create a distinct pattern of filled bubbles in down-ballot contests. > However, now we have a new problem: the ballot-marking machine becomes > responsible for randomly distributing the marks among the three > ballots. If the distribution is not random, then the voter becomes > vulnerable to coercion. > > --That's all totally wrong thinking. If all voters did that, then a > Dem voter would on all > three ballots show (usually) a pro-Dem bias, and then his vote could > be reliably (in an averaged statistical sense) be bought by a Dem-Boss > vote buyer. I don't see how that would be possible. How would a vote-buyer be able to buy votes in an "averaged statistical sense"? Could you describe this vote-buying process in more detail? -- ?!ng ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info