[EL] (Not Really) ranked-choice voting in SF

[Rob Richie]

Hi,  Joe,

For risk-limiting audits with RCV, you just need to verify that the
rankings on ballots are being properly translated into data that can be run
with RCV tallying software You want to find a way to determine the number
of ballots to verify -- that's the main issue being worked out. It's not a
"nightmare" -- just math. The "whoe ballot audit" that Phil Stark is
interested in goes well with such an approach.

I'd say a bigger nightmare is having an election system that can't handle
voters having more than two choices without accusations -- and realities --
of "spoiling"!

Rob Richie

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:13 AM, David A. Holtzman <David at holtzmanlaw.com>
> wrote:
> > The eventual availability of better equipment will relax the
> > hardware limitation.
>
> Ah, yes, thanks for the clarification!
>
> > For ballot style samples and ideas, please have a look at this page I put
> > together years ago.  Mechanized optical character (numeral) recognition
> is
> > not necessary. The Cambridge ballot is exemplary, but I think the
> hardware
> > to use it is no longer on the market, and it never got California or U.S.
> > certification anyway.  The Portland, Maine, ballot in today’s election
> may
> > not be federally certified but is of the “matrix” form you’re looking for
> > --see the last page of the official sample ballot at
> > http://www.portlandmaine.gov/voter/11082011ballot.pdf .  It looks a lot
> like
> > the Cambridge ballot.
>
> I cannot stress enough how important it is to have resources like the
> page above with sample ballots made available.  Thank you.  I know
> people conducting usability testing of IRV/RCV and this will be a very
> important resource for them.
>
> > Each full certification costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, I’m told.
> > And new certification may be required for revisions/improvements,
> including
> > software upgrades.  That’s what I meant by regulatory barriers to market
> > entry.
>
> Hundreds of thousands of dollars is, unfortunately (or fortunately,
> depending on your perspective) at the lower end of the spectrum, and
> often that's just for federal cert. It does seem to be getting better
> and cheaper... and maybe even a bit faster. ::)
>
>
> > The counting is easy, not at all a “total nightmare,” because once you’ve
> > looked at each ballot and put it in a counted stack for its first choice,
> > the only ballots you have to look at again are those in the smallest
> piles
> > -- the ones whose top choice just got eliminated.  And then all you have
> to
> > look for on each ballot is the top choice who’s still in the election.
> If
> > you’d like someone to conduct a mock RCV/IRV election & count for you or
> > that advisory board you’re on, just let me know.]
>
> Ah, that does not seem like a total nightmare.
>
> The total nightmare comes in doing risk-limiting audits of IRV/RCV
> races, but that's getting some good attention from math/stats/CS types
> (I can point to three technical papers that each make it a bit
> better).  The problem with being able to say, "we can say with x%
> confidence that if we hand counted all the IRV ballots the result
> would not change" from a sample in IRV/RCV is that it is very
> difficult to bound the margin between winners and losers (very
> difficult = it becomes computationally impossible with arbitrary
> amounts of rankings possible).  Anyway, there just may be fundamental
> limits to how we can audit IRV/RCV, but we'll see.  The CA SOS and the
> lead statistician (Berkeley's Philip Stark) in the AB 2023 pilots are
> observing San Francisco this week, so let's wish everyone well!
>
> best, Joe
>
> --
> Joseph Lorenzo Hall
> Postdoctoral Research Fellow
> Media, Culture and Communication
> New York University
> https://josephhall.org/
>



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