On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Raph Frank <raph...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Virtually all computer scientists? Yes. Google on the topic or look at the ACM.org web site, the largest association of computing professionals in the world and see their list of tens of thousands of computer scientists who've signed on to their position, or read the work of the Technical Guidelines Development Cmte of the US Election Assistance Cmsn or the position of NSF funded project ACCURATE (voting system project) or the position of the National Institute of Science and Technology or the US Government Accountability Office, etc etc.. If you followed the field of election integrity at all or you would know this already. In fact to say "virtually" all is probably an understatement. It is probably "all", although I leave room for there being one computer scientist who disagrees. > > Voters are always going to have to trust someone. It's not like > everyone gets to hand count the ballots themselves. That is your opinion which is very different than the beliefs of the founding fathers of the United States who tried to set up a system of checks and balances whereby the public had to trust no one. Blind trust is not a principle that is conducive to good democracy. > > If the ballots were published, it would be pretty easy to convert them into a > result. Not for the average citizen, who you do not want to be able to double check election results since you are pushing for IRV/STV the most difficult counting method that anyone is seriousy proposing to verify to my knowledge. > PR-STV does allow that verification, you can make sure that the number of > ballots in each sub-pile is correct and that each ballot is in the correct > sub-pile. So you agree with what I said, to verify the integrity of an STV election an ordinary citizen would have to be able to observe a publicly held 100% hand count. > > Rank the candidates in order of your choice is a perfectly reasonable > strategy. False - not if you want to avoid having your vote sometimes cause your 1st choice to lose and not if you want to avoid having your last choice candidate (who may also be the last choice of a majority of voters) sometimes win because not all voters' second, ... choices were counted in an equal and timely way. Really, don't you actually read the examples that are readily available that are posted on the Net or that people on this list have provided? >The issues with IRV are considerably lessened with the switch to multi-seat >elections. 100% FALSE statement. Just read some of the information that is available to you. STV exacerbates the problems of IRV because it is IRV but applied with even more complexity and inequity. Cheers, -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Post-Election Vote Count Audit A Short Legislative & Administrative Proposal http://electionmathematics.org//ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/Vote-Count-Audit-Bill-2009.pdf History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info