James Gilmour a �crit :
> Stephane, sorry if I sounded a little harsh in my one-word response. My problem is > that, as an > active campaigner for practical reform, I encounter comments about the complications > and "problems" > of STV-PR counting almost every week from those who are opposed to any reform at > all. (We have a > "First Past The Post" Campaign here in Scotland that is very actively doing > everything it can to > wreck the STV-PR reform that is now going through the Scottish Parliament.) No offense taken, you are right. > The STV-PR elections you describe above are amongst the most frustrating to have to > count by hand. > Usually you end up transferring small numbers of ballot papers of ever-decreasing > values in a most > time-consuming process. The effort seems out of all proportion to the numbers of > candidates or the > numbers of electors. For such elections I would strongly recommend that you punch > all the > preferences from the ballot papers into a computer data file and then use one of the > (freebie) STV > programs to do all the sorting, counting and tabulation of the results and > intermediate > calculations. Yes but it is still a long work to do alone... I did it like that and it took me around 1 hour, some would find that fast, I though it would go faster... Typing 15 (ballots) x 15 (preferences) x 12 (districts) preferences at more than 1 second a preference... > For public elections (FPTP and MMP) we already use an army of enumerators in one > counting centre in > each local government area. Northern Ireland experience shows it will be no great > problem to train > them to handle STV-PR. The main thing is make sure that the senior officials really > understand the > STV rules and understand what their staffs have to do. Here in the UK we have a > stupid obsession > with getting the results out as fast as possible. So we start counting about one > hour after the > polls have closed and count all through the night. Constituencies compete to see > which can be the > first to declare! And we have through-the-night TV programs where pundits predict > the total outcome > based on projections from only one or two results!! I am pleased to say that ever > since 1973 a more > sensible approach has been taken in Northern Ireland for their STV-PR elections. > They start fresh > the morning after polling day, having had a good night's sleep. For large public > elections most of > the counting is completed by mid-day on the second day after polling, with all of > the results > through by mid-afternoon. > > Ironically, one complaint about the electronic voting and computerised counting in > the 2002 D�il > �ireann election that produced "instant" results once the button had been pressed, > was that > established politicians who were booted out by the voters had no time to adjust to > their impending > fate. With manual sorting and counting, they would have seen for some hours that > their piles of > ballot papers were not likely to be high enough to secure election and that > transfers were passing > them by, stage by stage. This pandering to over-inflated political egos was brought > forward as a > "problem" during the Stage 1 oral evidence sessions when the the Local Governance > (Scotland) Bill > was being considered by the Local Government and Transport Committee of the > Parliament. Such > considerations seem a long way from most of the topics discussed on this list, but > (sadly) we do > have deal with them if we want to win practical reform. > > James As for any system, both electronic ballot entrance and paper trail should be used. If you can ask voters to enter their ballot in a console then print their ballot and send their vote once they check it is identical to the paper they put in a box after, you have both benefits. You could have separate computers output the results in a matter of hours and keep the papers in case the election office suspects any fraud by statistical analysis... STV is a good model. Could you elaborate on the debate aspects? Stephane ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
