On 8/19/05, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 09:05 PM 8/18/2005, Warren Smith wrote:
> >I do not especially recommend running range elections in this style. > >I would much prefer it if there were voting machines specifically designed > >for range voting. However, because range voting CAN be done on > >plurality machines as a stopgap measure, that makes it a lot > >more adoptible than many other forms of voting, for > >example IRV, which CANNOT be done on many kinds of plurality machines. > > I question this assertion. It depends on the number of candidates. Yes, > combination presses would be much more difficult to use in IRV, but Mr. > Smith and the others who have written about the use of these machines for > Range have assumed one lever per rating value. In IRV, levers equal to the > number of candidates (minus one, but at least one net) is required for each > candidate -- last place being indicated by no press. So for four > candidates, three levers per candidate are needed. > > I've said this before, so that the assertion continues to be made about IRV > and voting machines does disturb me. Indeed, IRV and Range require, > actually, the same kind of ballots, if you want granularity sufficient to > give a unique rating to each candidate. That is, you could vote in the IRV > fashion on any Range ballot. The only way that Range may handle more > candidates than IRV on a ballot is by requiring equal rankings for some > candidates, if the voter wants to express an opinion on all candidates. Yes, Range, IRV, Condorcet and others can use the same kind of _ballot_. Warren (and my) claim is that existing voting _machines_ that are designed to handle Plurality elections, _can_ handle Range Voting. But if the machine simply counts and reports how many ballots had each hole punched or filled in, or how many voters pulled each lever, that information is not sufficient to conduct an IRV, Condorcet, etc. election. Consider my favorite IRV example: 35 A>B>C 25 B>A>C 40 C>B>A The ballots could look like this: A 1 2 3 B 1 2 3 C 1 2 3 where the "1", "2" and "3" are holes that can be punched or marked, or levers that can be pulled. The 35 A>B>C voters would mark their ballots as A *1 2 3 B 1 *2 3 C 1 2 *3 where the "*" indicates the mark/punch/pull. The other voters would cast their votes appropriately. There are two problems with running this IRV election on dumb plurality voting machines: 1. The machine probably doesn't have the flexibility to check that the ballots are properly marked. A plurality voting machine could check that only one rank is chosen for each candidate, but could probably not check for two candidates assigned the same rank. 2. When the polls close, the following counts would be available from the above example: 1 2 3 A 35 25 40 B 25 75 0 C 40 0 60 Assuming all the ballots were filled out correctly, we can see that B had the fewest first-choice votes and should be eliminated. The problem is, we can't tell from the counts how many of the B-first voters voted for A second, and how many voted for C second, so we don't know how to redistribute the votes to the other candidates. (The Australian solution is to announce the first preference counts on election night, and to send all the ballot papers to the central election offices. For those races where no candidate got a majority of first preferences, the ballots are counted and shuffled over the next several days. In close races, with absentee ballots trickling in, sometimes it takes two or three weeks to figure out who the winner is. We could do a similar thing in the US, of course.) A dumb voting machine that just totals up the punches, as above, could easily handle Range Voting elections. Suppose, just for illustration, that the same voters would vote in an RV election so as to get the following totals: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A 40 0 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 35 B 0 0 0 0 0 75 0 0 0 25 C 40 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 60 Then we can trivially compute the ratings as follows: A = (0*40 + 5*25 + 9*35) / (40 + 25 + 35) = 440 / 100 = 4.4 B = (5*75 + 9*25) / (75 + 25) = 600 / 100 = 6.0 C = (0*40 + 9*60) / (40 + 60) = 540 / 100 = 5.4 (Note, by the way, that the counting can be done at the voting locations, and just the numerators and denominators (440 / 100, 600 / 100, 540 / 100) transmitted to the central election office for combining to get the final ratings. With IRV, the amount of data that needs to be transmitted to the central office is considerably greater, and is considerably more difficult to understand, making it harder to audit.) Cheers, - Jan ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info