On 12/10/2009 12:36 AM, Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
I've copied in our local voting expert who can tell you more about the subject of vote tabulation in an STV-based system which is online and not manual.
I'm not talking about "manual" as in the case of people using their hands to count things. Rather, I'm talking about the fact that in STV the canvassing/counting system, whether it is performed by people or machine, requires that the input be the full set of the sequence of choices on the full set of ballots that were cast. In classical majority voting counting could occur at the precinct level and the tallies posted on the wall and the sums, and only the sums, need be forwarded to the central canvassing center. But with STV one can't run a local STV iterative calculation to completion, post a precinct winner, and then forward the simple sums to the canvassing center. Rather the best that can happen at the precinct level is to capture the ordered selections on each ballot into portable form. It is only at the central counting facility that with each iteration of the STV count can the lowest candidate of that iteration be removed and the choices of those ballots with that candidate as the current highest preference be refined to make the next choice the highest preference. In our context this means that all the ballots (or their electronic equivalents) must be sent to Marina del Rey where the STV iteration can occur. --karl--