Up: Home page Previous: Issue 20

Voting matters - for the technical issues of STV

Issue 21, March 2006

(Complete issue in PDF, 164Kb.)

Editorial

The delay in producing this issue is due to the lack of material. An issue is produced when about 20 pages of articles are available.

There are 3 papers in this issue:

Jeff O'Neill: Fast Algorithms for Counting Ranked Ballots.
Many years ago, the speed of undertaking a computer count was an issue. Computers are now fast enough for this not to be a serious concern. This paper shows that comparatively modest changes in the way a program operates can make significant changes to the speed of counting.
Brian Wichmann: Changing the Irish STV Rules.
The Republic of Ireland has used STV since its independence, but used a counting rule in which the order of the ballot papers could potentially change the result, albeit rather infrequently. This paper considers a change to the Meek rules which is assessed by means of computer simulation.
Franz Ombler: Booklet position effects, and two new statistics to gauge voter understanding of the need to rank candidates in preferential elections.
The use of STV in New Zealand is a very welcome development. The New Zealand elections randomised the order in which candidates were listed in ballot papers for some elections, but not in an accompanying booklet given to all voters. This paper demonstrates effects of the booklet and proposes measures of voter understanding of the importance of ranking their chosen candidates.

We have an innovation with this issue which is actually some additional material under the heading Internet Resources on the McDougall web site. The additional material is in the form of links to papers or references that are being used in Voting matters contributions. Hypertext links are typically too long to handle easily by means of printing, and therefore present a problem in producing Voting matters. There is also an additional hazard with such links as they can be removed or their position changed. The web site should be able to record changes and record material that has been lost.

Lastly, a report on electronic voting produced by the Irish Commission should be available shortly on their web site at: http://www.cev.ie/.

1.1 TV voting

There is an increasing use of popular voting associated with TV programmes, which, unfortunately, does not include preferential voting. With a programme like BBC's Big Read, one wonders what the result would have been. For instance, if one could (somehow) arrange preferential voting in which is the voters had read the books in their list, how would War and Peace have compared with Harry Potter?

Readers are reminded that views expressed in Voting matters by contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the McDougall Trust or its trustees.

Papers with citations

Jeff O'Neill: Fast Algorithms for Counting Ranked Ballots. (p1-5, PDF 36Kb)
Brian Wichmann: Changing the Irish STV Rules. (p6-11, PDF 52Kb).
Franz Ombler: Booklet position effects, and two new statistics to gauge voter understanding of the need to rank candidates in preferential elections. (p12-21, PDF 72Kb)

Main index Author index