At 03:51 PM 5/25/2007, Jonathan Lundell wrote: >I've used double-data-entry for some small internal elections in the >Green Party, and it's been fairly effective. The additional cost is >mainly recruiting extra volunteers. The extra time is minimal, since >the two entry teams can work in parallel (or you can publish >provisional results and then do the second count). > >Two details that complicate things a bit is that a) some counting >rules are dependent on the order in which ballots are counted, so you >have to make sure that the data entry proceeds in the same ballot >entry in both cases, and b) if you find a discrepancy in the data >entry, you need to be able to find the ballot in question, to resolve >the discrepancy. In my small elections, I simply number the paper >ballots as they're being entered the first time, and then pipeline >them to the second data-entry group. > >I've never done it for more than about a hundred ballots, though.
My own analysis presumed plurality elections, with one race counted at a time, which allows counting through sorting, which is much faster than recording votes, generally. Though with proper procedures, you can make vote recording quite fast. Time and motion people are good at this, generally. But election clerks are usually not time and motion people, and their jobs don't depend on being efficient. In one sense this is reasonable: counting ballots is not their usual job, its only something that they do occasionally. So why bother optimizing the procedures, it's faster just to count the ballots. What's called for is an analysis and recommendation of procedures that could be widely used. Thus each clerk does not have to work out the details, run the experiments, maximize the accuracy while minimizing the effort. Exact entry of ballots, where a computer record is created of each individual ballot content, is, in my view, highly desirable. But I was first comparing hand counting with machine counting in an environment where that isn't done currently. It's inherently more expensive if done by hand. So this is a task which shouldn't be done by hand. I'll note that if paper ballots are used, they can be transported to wherever automated counting equipment is used. However, the task of recognizing votes on paper ballots with scanned images of ballots, by computer, is, quite simply, not a difficult one. I would expect a system using standard computers and scanners -- and any fax is a scanner -- could be put together from equipment lying about, and the software could, again, be public source. I.e., free to the user, donations appreciated. (Public agencies could legally issue a grant to an organization to develop such software and make it available for free public use, but I don't even think this would be necessary. People would write the software. For free.) So ballots could be counted at the polling stations, or at least the images could be collected there. Then the ballots are sealed and remain for confirmation if there is ever any suspicion that the images were altered. As readers may know, I'd make image alteration practically impossible to pull off successfully by allowing election observers to independently image the ballots, whether with a fax or with cameras, which would do the trick quite easily and with minimal security risk. Imaging and then sealing the ballots reduces ballot handling to an absolute minimum, thus greatly increasing security. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
