2010/5/21 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]> > At 02:24 PM 5/21/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote: > >> And for simplicity, the summable method is not the official count, but it >> is the official grounds for a recount. The statute says: "the official >> result is the most likely result for [the process described above], >> calculated using fractional votes. The summed results (correlation matrix >> and number-of-approvals-versus-candidates matrix) are published ASAP, and if >> 2 of the 3 biggest local math departments determine that those summed >> ballots are within N votes of indicating a different result than the >> official results, then you have a recount." Obviously when the summable >> results are published before the official centralized count, anybody (or any >> newspaper) with the algorithm can calculate the almost-certain "provisional >> winners". That way, you get all of the verifiability and speed advantages of >> summability, but none of the statutory complexity. >> > > Statutory "simplicity" won at the cost of lawsuits over the meaning of > "ASAP," "biggest," "local" and "math department." >
Oh, come on. I clearly wasn't proposing this as actual statutory language. All of those terms would receive their adequate legal definition, along with "determine", "most likely", "recount", etc. > > With public ballot imaging, lots of things become possible. The election > commission can scan all the ballots and transmit them for central counting > at the same time as it publishes the ballot images. Counting ballots by > hand, sorting, for example, is much easier if it is not the actual ballots > being counted but images of them. (Printed or otherwise). If the counting > process can be verified by anyone, and if ballots are serialized (probably > when the ballot boxes are opened), it's simple to correlate the work of > people so that public verification can be efficiently done by many people > doing a little work. Media would probably use computer recognition of the > ballots, to get fast results, and so would the election commissions. Best of > both worlds. > Publishing aggregate data sufficient to determine, with exponentially-high probability, the true winner, puts verification within the means of anybody with a computer (including a cell phone). If you don't trust anybody to write the program for you, then you also need the ability to write a hundred or two lines of code (or less if it's ruby/python). > > I like Asset because it solves the proportional representation problem, > nailing it down, leaving no room for real dispute over proportionality, and > creating transparancy and effectively full representation. It's really an > extension of the electoral college device, only with unrestricted > representation (full representation of all who vote) in the college. > Delegable proxy would do this directly, without a "college," but would then > lose secret ballot, unless you have computer security systems, which then > requires trusting those who maintain them (as well as those who programmed > them). > > But short of Asset, PAV seems easy, simple to vote, and only the counting > gets complex. That's where complexity should be! It's not complex to > understand, it just requires more complicated handling of ballots, for hand > counting, and more transmission of information, and I'm suggesting that the > information should be transmitted anyway, so that the election can be > verified by anyone (probably in part, collaborating with others, > independently in various groups that are interested). > > Agreed with all of the above. > But without Asset, there will always be significant wasted votes, unless > you force voters to make decisions that they are not ready to make. > > Ummm... I'm not ready to grant you "always". Asset is a good way to avoid that problem, though. JQ
---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
