On Dec 30, 2007, at 12:53 PM, James Gilmour wrote: > Jonathan Lundell > Sent: 30 December 2007 19:22 >> I've posted the tally sheet (I don't know whether it's official; I >> got >> it informally from one of the candidates), temporarily, for anyone >> who >> might be interested: >> >> http://homepage.mac.com/jlundell/filechute/KPFK%20hand%20count.zip > > > Jonathan > This is very interesting and it would be very useful to see the > Election Rules they used. I don't think these are BC-like rules, > i.e. applying the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method (WIGM) of > transferring surpluses. I suspect the rules are more like the STV > rules for the Australian Federal Senate elections, i.e. Inclusive > Gregory Method (IGM). > > I suggest that, because when Grace Aaron's surplus is transferred > (Round 21), they show only one transfer value (cell BK7 = > 0.04476852). But Grace Aaron then held ballot papers of two > different values, namely 1.00 (her own first preferences and all the > first preferences transferred to her from excluded candidates) and > 25.5 ballots @ 0.213867(etc) transferred from the surplus of > W01-Ahjamu Makalani. If they had been using BC-like rules, they > would have had to apply two different transfer values. Instead, > they have averaged, the way the Australians do (and that is > fundamentally flawed). > > They also seem to have used arithmetic of indeterminate precision - > there is no truncation to a stated precision. Some results are > shown to 14 decimal places, others to 16 decimal places. The > differencing values are shown to 29 decimal places. I don't know how > they did these calculations because my version of Excel (Excel 2002) > cuts out at 15 decimal places. They start with 2246 votes, but > at Round 5 they have gained nearly one whole extra vote and then > they progressively lose votes. If the calculations are done > correctly and consistently, the vote total at the completion of each > Round should always be exactly 2246. > > Although I can follow the calculations, it seems illogical to me to > have put the numbers of transferred votes in a column before the > numbers of ballot papers from which the vote values were calculated.
Yes, that's confusing. And you're clearly right about this not being BC, which would, now that I think about it, not be amenable to calculation with such a simple spreadsheet. There are some interesting transfers. U16 for example: =1+1/4/5+1/8/7+1/9/8+1/8/7 I'd be curious to see just how repeatable a recount would be. An example like this illustrates just how difficult it can be to audit a hand count of a large STV election. I'd much prefer a published ballot file and counting program. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
