On Wed, 4 May 2005 18:14:19 -0500 Paul Kislanko wrote:
Dave Ketchum wrote
For the whole district (state in this case) we need an array with a column and row for each candidate.I haven't personally worked on election counting software, but I would be
The ballots do not come in in this format. Makes sense, at or near the polling place, to convert them to array format, for the array format is efficient for data transmission, and such arrays can be summed, element by element.
extremely surprised if the people who do don't convert ballots to an array
format for transmission - otherwise it would be pretty much impossible to
provide the coverage the TV provide.
The arrays I write of cannot be converted back to the ballots they describe, but they are EXACTLY what is needed to determine the Condorcet winner - and also a compact statement that people, and programs, can learn to interpret from.
Makes sense to do the summing in whatever sub-districts make sense, such as county. These arrays may be interesting enough to publish and to analyze.
I think they ARE published and analyzed already. When you see the county-by-county breakdowns in the newspaper presented in an n-county-row by m-candidate-column format you are looking at an array. You don't think some reporter re-typed all those numbers, do you?
Since you are likely thinking of a report for an election using Plurality method, not the same array, but agreed the newspaper needs and wants something useful they can pass on to their readers.
NOTE my adding an extra row to the array for first choice - your last response implied you missed this.
While not part of the Condorcet data for declaring winners, a row could be added to such arrays, to record each ballot's first choice. While some may complain, correctly, that getting the most first choice votes does not determine winning, it does show voter desires, while the final numbers in the arrays are the result of adjusting to account for conflicting stated desires.
AND, these voter desires CAN be stated as percentages.
If the "Condorcet data" means the pairwise matrix, what you'd want is more likely an extra column to contain the first place votes.
Actually, you can analyze an election by using two arrays generated from the same set of ranked ballots.
Let B be the "ballot matrix" with n candidates defining the rows and n columns defining the number of voters who voted for candidate i for place j. In this array every column can be an expressed as a percentage: x of T voters had the candidate ranked 1st, y of T voters had a different candidate rated first, and so on. x2 of T voters had the candidate the candidate rated 2nd, y2 of T voters had a different candidate rated 2nd, and so on...
If you want to continue this array, let's make it a separate discussion - not clear to me how we get to useful results.
Then you have the nXn pairwise matrix, which just shows the "how many preffered candidate A over candidate B" data.
For this array each candidate owns a row and a column, with each row counting preferences for this candidate, and each column counting preferences against this candidate (thus you have a count of A>B, and a count of B>A - I also like permitting A=B and say, when two voters vote A=B, let us count as if one said A>B and one said B>A).
Any combination of the two is some variation on Borda, but views of the
ballot set provide useful information, and if anything it is easier to
calculate the candidate vs rank array than the pairwise matrix. Producing
the "percentage matrix" is just an O(n) addition to any program that can
produce a pairwise matrix, since it only takes about 3 lines of code to do
that.
Not clear to me - but may not matter.
Write-ins require thought:
Likely thought would be to combine them as if one extra candidate.
Then, assuming normal use of this feature, the count would show nothing more needed doing.
This is the right approach. All "write-ins" = "write-in" is the candidate. Despite the best efforts of the AI folks, the fact will remain at least for our lifetimes that any "write in" vote will require manual review.
Could be true for paper ballots. For electronic voting, the voting machine can include a keyboard - still have to argue over spellings, but getting possible.
Apparently some states permit a sort of write-in where the candidate does declare candidacy, though without the formality of nomination. Here even scribbling on a paper ballot could be matchable against a list of declared candidates.
And it just struck me that there's no really easy way to automate the entry
of a ranked ballot where every rank could potentially be a write-in...
Certainly doable for the nXn matrix; I remain unclear about the other.
Hmmmm....
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice.
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