> > > On 2/2/12 11:39 AM, David L Wetzell wrote: > >> I wanted to mention that Approval-voting enhanced IRV and STV could be >> tabulated at the precinct level. You let everyone rank up to 3 candidates >> and then you use these rankings to get 3 finalists. You then sort the >> votes into ten possible ways people could rank the 3 finalists. >> > > there are 9 possible ways of ranking 3 candidates, unless you're counting > "none of the above". i guess that would make it 10. > > in general, for N candidates and IRV, the number of piles you need to sort > to is > > If we take a two stage approach then we don't need to do it for the general case... We can keep N down to S+2, or the number of contested seats plus two..., which leads to (N+2)^2+1 piles.
> > the number of piles grows pretty large for IRV, which is why we normally > call it "not precinct summable". essentially a physical instrument (like a > thumb drive) that contains the information for each and every ballot must > be (securely) transported from each voting place to the central tabulation > facility (like City Hall). > > folks like Kathy Dopp understandably complain about the lack of > transparency about such, while i didn't see it as too bad of a problem for > a small city like Burlington. however IRV was passed (and vetoed by the > guv back then) in Vermont for the gubernatorial election, and that > centralization of counting would be even more of a problem. i just can't > see some Town Clerk driving up from Bennington VT to Montpelier to deliver > the opaque physical instrument representing all those votes. that would > smell bad. > Hence, the need for 2 stages... Dopp herself admitted this would work. > > But if the third or fourth most often ranked candidates were within a >> small percent of each other then it would not require a manual recount. >> The IRV cd be done with two sets of 3 candidates so there'd be twice as >> much sorting in the 2nd round and then there'd be a manual recount if and >> only if there's a different outcome in the two sets of candidates, which is >> not likely. >> > > with FPTP, there need be only one team of counters (but more teams will > divide the labor and the results are perfectly summable) and that number > does not grow with N. a team will normally have 4 people that are known > supporters of the different candidates. there are two "callers", they > simultaneously examine each ballot, one at a time, and call out the name of > the voted candidate. there are two "counters" that rack up the counts. > for every block of 50 or 100 ballots, the counts (between the two > counters) are compared and if there is any discrepancy, that block is > recalled and recounted. > > for IRV, this can be done with a single team or multiple teams (to divide > the labor) but the piles (a function of the 1st-choice vote or the > remaining 1st-choice vote) need to be separate so that when a candidate is > eliminated, the votes are "transferred" (as in "STV") at the end of the > pass or round. then there is retabulation and this recounting cannot be > done in parallel, it must be done sequentially, up to the final round. > If you have S+2 finalists candidates, after the first stage, with S being the number of seats then you can sort the votes into (S+2)^2+1 piles in a way that lets the transfer to take place and this only needs be done once > > for Condorcet, if the labor is divided, there needs to be a team for every > pair of candidates (essentially the number of piles divided by two: > N*(N-1)/2 ). each team is concerned only for its assigned pair of > candidates (who is ranked above who) and the ballots are passed from one > team to the adjacent team. but there is only one pass. if the number of > teams is not available, it can be done with a single team sequentially, but > would be multiple passes and would be laborious. > Which is why I like Condorcet for when there are relatively few voters and candidates and the voters are very knowledgeable about all of the candidates.... dlw
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