8. Dopp: Difficult and inefficient to manually audit
IRV can be manually audited just as well as
vote-for-one elections, although it does take
more effort (since voters must be allowed to
express more information on their ballot). A
manual audit can either be done using a random
sample of ballots from all jurisdictions, or a
random sample of ballots from a random sample
of voting machines, or by a complete re-tally
from a random sample of voting machines. A
complete re-tally of all ballots (a recount)
is, of course, possible but unnecessary unless a court recount is ordered.
Notice the slipperiness. Dopp says it's difficult
and inefficient, FairVote says it can be manually
audited "just as well" but "it does take more
effort." Those are contradictory. Taking more
effort is not "just as well." Dopp did not say it
was impossible to manually audit. This is typical
FairVote argument, Richie is unfazeable. You can
tell him his pants are on fire and he'll say that
they feel no hotter than usual. Which might be
true *and* his pants are on fire.
The counting process is far more complex, so the
auditing is far more complex. Ordinarily, with an
audit, one can pick a sample precinct and count
it. Period. But with IRV, one has to know what
round, what candidates were eliminated, before
the counting will match what was reported. You
have to go through the same process, depending on
the same instructions that were given from the
central office. I'd estimate that, in an election
that went through many rounds, the difficulty
could be ten times as great as with simpler,
precinct-summable methods. With a precinct
summable method, you just count what is on the
ballots, you don't need to know anything from
other precincts. And then you can compare this
with what was reported officially from the precinct.
Note that IRV and other Later-no-Harm methods
can't be precinct-summed. This is actually
unusual, most election methods can be summed.
Approval is obvious: you just count all the
votes. Determining a Condorcet winner (candidate
who would beat all candidates in a pairwise
election with them) is a matter of summing the
votes in all pairwise elections, what the
precinct reports is a matrix of results, and the
matrixes are then summed. So, though it takes
more data, Condorcet methods are precinct-summable.
Continued with:
9. Dopp: Could necessitate counting all
presidential votes in Washington, D.C.
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