On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:25 AM, Kathy Dopp <[email protected]> wrote: > That is far superior a method to that used in most US states where > ballots are secretly counted by private companies and the counts never > checked at a level that would assure accurate election outcomes, or at > all in most states.
I agree that that is a pretty bad idea. Elections should be both accurate and seen to be accurate. > One must randomly select publicly reported vote counts that tally to > the total results and manually count 100% of the ballots for each > randomly selected vote count and compare it to the reported election > results count. Ok, so if there was 100 polling stations, you would pick say 5 of them and then apply to be allowed to count those votes? If the results are the same as the official count, then it is likely that all 100 are the same (since you picked them at random, any group trying to tamper with the results wouldn't have known which polling stations to leave alone). This covers tampering where the tampering is small but in a large number of the districts. If the fraudsters tampered a large amount but in a small number of polling station, they would have a higher chance they would get away with it. You would also need to include in your check any polling stations with suspicious results. For example, if they don't match exit polling or if their result is an outlier when compared to all the other polling stations. This method could also be applied in the IRV case if they use the central office method (i.e. counts are performed in each polling station under the direction of a central office). You would have a list of the results for each round from each polling station and what candidates were eliminated. You could then manually check a random set of the polling stations, i.e. Round 1: - Sort ballots into piles based on first choices - count each pile - make sure they match announced Round 2: - Check who was eliminated after round 1 - Split his pile based on 2nd choices - count all the sub-piles - make sure they match the announced result and so on > Why not use a fairer voting method that is easier to check the machine > counts since most methods are precinct summable? I feel that the plurality has massive disadvantages due to giving the top 2 parties control of the democratic process in a country. It would be interesting to see what the effects of improved single seat methods like approval voting and condorcet would have. I think they would both be an improvement. Evidence from Australia says that IRV doesn't break the 2 party system, but maybe some of the other single seat voting methods would. PR is even better at getting accurate representation. However, again, some methods can have unforeseen effects. Party list systems achieve very high levels of proportionality, but reduce the ability for voters to hold individual politicians to account. Also, they inherently assume that parties are the basis of politicial representation. PR-STV allows voters to vote purely based on parties, to vote for individuals or a combination of the 2. It gives max freedom to the voter. I think this is worth a small risk of non-monotonicity, though that assumes a reasonable number of seats per constituency. > No, but they can add up all the precinct totals and see that they add > up correctly and then manually audit a random sample of precincts. It > is very very trivially simple compared to trying to check the trade > secret machine counts of an STV election. I agree that trade secret voting machines are a bad idea. The count should be as public as possible. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
