FYI, After discussions today with the SF group of activists, I realized that my prior fla in my IRV paper for the number of vote counts which must be publicly reported in each precinct prior to randomly selecting precincts to manually audited (corresponding to the number of possible permutations of candidate orderings voters could select, assumes that voters are allowed to rank from one up to all N candidates.
If voters are only allowed to rank say up to 3 candidates, as in the SF IRV elections, then the formula changes to: given: R = the number of possible rankings or IRV rounds N = the number of candidates in each election contest the total number of permutations and the number of vote counts which must be publicly reported for EACH auditable unit is (drum roll): the sum from i = 0 to i = R-1 of N!/(i+N-R)! That gives for San Francisco elections: for 2 candidates, 15 vote counts need to be publicly reported for each IRV election contest for EACH precinct prior to randomly selecting precincts for auditing for 9 candidates, 585 vote counts need to be publicly reported for each IRV election contest for EACH precinct prior to randomly selecting precincts for auditing Not that IRV proponents seem to care about checking if the machine vote counts are accurate or not, but when there are fairer voting methods that actually solve the spoiler problem in all cases rather than in just one case, and are far easier to manually audit and count, the people who support IRV should think twice about whether any gains are worth all the expense and effort of IRV counting methods or not. -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
