On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:06 AM, robert bristow-johnson <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jan 15, 2010, at 11:34 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: > >> On Jan 15, 2010, at 7:51 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote: >> >>> Imagine sending all your ballots nationwide to DC for manual counting >>> to check the outcome of a Presidential election. We'll simply let the >>> GW administration, for instance, count the results in his own IRV >>> election! >> >> That's something of a non sequitur. Anyone with all the ballot files >> (every state, for example, or anyone else) could do the count. > > and, in fact, it can be decentralized to the extent it is now. each state > could have their central place, and in turn, each county, each precinct. > the entire tree could be a public record on the internet that has links to > child nodes or parent node. with 3 credible candidates there are 9 piles to > have to maintain. each precinct sorts the ballots into one of 9 piles and > counts it and puts the 9 numbers up in this public place on the web. > everyone can check their own node to see that it isn't misreported. i do > not see why, physically, it would be more vulnerable to attack by the > government in power that what is presently the case. it's a factor of 9/2 > more numbers to keep secure with that ranked ballot.
I was talking about IRV voting. Where do you get "9" piles from? (9 would be the number of Condorcet tallies for 3 candidates, *not* the number of ballot piles for either Condorcet - which does not require ballot sorting to hand count - and *not* the number of ballot piles for IRV voting. If you want to make IRV precinct-summable for 3 candidates, it requires 3*2+3*2+3 = 15 separate tallies. To count IRV by sorting piles of ballots requires far fewer piles than 9 but also to do decentralized as you suggest would require everyone in the entire country in all precincts sitting around waiting for all the late-counted ballots to be ready and waiting for the total results to be tabulated centrally somewhere so they could sort the ballots for the next round - totally undoable practically. Of course the number of tallies to make IRV/STV precinct-summable grows exponentially as the number of candidates grows and is equal to more than the total number of voters who vote in each precinct most of the time with a larger number of candidates. > > each state, each little government would be responsible to confirm their > precinct totals on the map and everybody gets to look at it. what's > particularly insecure about that? I don't think you yet understand the counting process for IRV/STV. Why not create a set of 200 ballots for one precinct with a mixture of all 15 unique ballot combinations on them for three candidates and try counting them so you can fully understand the process. Cheers Kathy > > -- > > r b-j [email protected] > > "Imagination is more important than knowledge." > > > > > -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
