Hello Allen,
simply using the number of ballots involved in the tie is enough. Compare
its rest using euclidian divison by the number of involved candidates to the
alphabetical rank of the candidates.
Simple, effective and greatly equiprobable. It works for winner selection as
for elemination rounds.
Stéphane
From: Allen Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [EM] Random and reproductible tie-breaks
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:37:03 -0400
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (on 24 September
2008 23:05:05 +0000), [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(=?iso-8859-1?B?U3TpcGhhbmUgUm91aWxsb24=?=) wrote:
>for an anti-fraud purpose, the capacity to repeat the counting operation
is
>a must. Hence I recommand to use a reproductible random procedure to
break
>ties. This allows the use of different computers to reproduce the
counting
>operation, while always obtaining the same result despite ties.
Cryptographically secure hashing methods would appear to be the appropriate
way to do this, using the ballots and/or some other agreed-upon information
(e.g., the year of the election in a specified coding, the names of the
candidates in a specified format...). I'm not sure whether it would be a
good idea to set it up such that the tie-breaking couldn't be computed
before the ballots came in (as would be possible if all the information
needed for it was known in advance).
-Allen
--
Allen Smith, Ph.D. http://cesario.rutgers.edu/easmith/
September 11, 2001 A Day That Shall Live In Infamy II
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
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