On Oct 6, 2008, at 11:30 AM, AllAbout Voting wrote:
So I will ask a pair of constructive questions: 1. Can Condorcet voting be compatible with precinct level optical scan systems? (which many election integrity advocates consider to be pretty good)
Yes.
2. Can Condorcet voting be compatible with end-to-end verifiable election integrity systems such as punchscan, 3-ballot, etc...?
Aside from the NxNx3 adaption of 3-ballot to condorcet information, I think it was suggested on this list a while ago that 3-ballot can be adapted to 0-100 range voting by scaling up its three ballots of 0-1 voting and requiring sums of 100-200 for a valid vote instead of sums of 1 or 2. If that sort of system was used, rankings for condorcet counting could be extracted from the ratings votes, or a more advanced ratings-aware system could be used. Actually, that sounds pretty messy. NxNx3 is probably better.
Most of these methods require automatic ballot construction or specially clueful voters. I'd expect 99% of voters to never bother verifying that the election was actually done right if they had the certificates with which to check it. I think probably the best defense against electoral malfeasance is probably through the political and legal processes, and through the vigilance of the citizenry. We'll never make a system so mathematically perfect that we don't still need those other things.
Brian Olson http://bolson.org/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
