Talk:Preferential voting

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Contents 1 Ballot images added 2 AU Senate election ballot. 3 Disambiguation 4 Merge in Group voting ticket 5 Mystery section 6 Propose move 7 Uniqueness of Votes 8 RONR's multiple-member preferential voting

[edit] Ballot images added

I added 4 types of ballot images to this page. I just used MSPaint to make them, but I tried to make them pretty. I think they all cover the range of possible formats. If anyone would like to improve the ballot images or descriptive text above, feel free. --Tomruen 06:00, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] AU Senate election ballot.

Would Tomruen care to try making a sample AUstralian Senate ballot paper. Looks a bit like this:

---

• A[_]Green_ B[_]NLP__ C[_]Dem__ D[_]Libtn___ E[_]Rep___ UnGrouped
• XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
• A[_]Nader_ B[_]Smith C[_]Kerry D[_]deSoto__ E[_]Bush__ UG[_]Rubble
• A[_]Brown_ B[_]Jones C[_]Derry D[_]Friedman E[_]Cheney UG[_]Flintsone
• __________ B[_]Smyth C[_]Perry D[_]Milton__ E[_]Laura
• __________ _________ _________ D[_]Forbes
• Instructions, either
• write the number "1" in a box above the line; or
• write the numbers "1", "2", "3" ......."16", "17" in the boxes below the line.

---

[edit] Disambiguation

Why doesn't this have a disambig page? --Simetrical 02:44, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge in Group voting ticket

Could I propose we merge in the Group voting ticket to here, or strip it out from here? The article on its own is very short, and mostly duplicated here and there. Felix the Cassowary 03:49, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mystery section

I have deleted this section:

A potential problem with preferential votes is that they can be used to undermine a secret ballot, and thus enable corruption by vote buying. If there are enough candidates then the number of possible voting patterns may be much larger than the number of voters, and it then becomes possible to use early preferences to vote for the desired candidates and then to use later preferences to identify the voter to the person who has purchased the vote and looks at the ballot papers.

As an example, in the Irish general election, 2002, the electronic votes were published for the Dublin North constituency. There were 17 candidates allowing more than 966 million million possible patterns of preferences, but there were fewer than 44,000 votes cast. The most common pattern (for three of the candidates in a particular order) was chosen by 800 voters, and more than 16,000 patterns were chosen by just one voter each.

One way to avoid this possibility for buying a vote and confirming it has been cast as specified is to prevent partisan observers from systematically viewing each voter's preferences.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. I live in a country which has used preferential voting for 80 years and I have never heard if anything remotely like this (inasmuch as I understand what "this" actually is). If someone can explain it in plain English perhaps it can be reinstated. Adam 23:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you cut it. I'd at least want a reputable source for this claim. KVenzke 04:45, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

It is very simple. A wants to buy or bully a vote from B, but wants to know that the vote has actually been cast. A tells B how to cast the first few preferences to suit A's political purposes and how to cast the remaining preferences to identify B individually. A then looks at the individual votesas cast. If there a vote like this then A pays B, if not then kneecaps may be at risk. It does not work where voting is a single mark.

Here is an article about it [1]. Here are two quotes from the Irish government's Commission on Electronic Voting report[2] though they have got the number too low (you do not have to vote a full preference list in Ireland):

"The claim here is that someone could bribe or intimidate a voter to give a first preference vote in a certain way by requiring that this voter register a distinctive and unique sequence of preferences for lower-ranking candidates. This is in principle feasible, given the huge number of different ways in which an STV ballot can be completed. In the 2002 Dáil election trial in Meath, for example, there were 14 candidates – giving 14x13x12x11x … x1 (= c.87,178,291,200) different ways to complete the ballot. This gives plenty of opportunity for every voter in the constituency to be given a distinctive signature sequence for lower order preferences."

"Publication of the ballot results in full but in random order, as happened after the 2002 pilots, is a very valuable aid in ensuring the accuracy of the results, since anyone is free to recount these for themselves. Nonetheless it has been submitted that this can in theory reveal deliberate and distinctive voter “signatures” of low-preference votes (highly improbable rankings of the candidates ranked 11 to 15 in a 15-candidate contest, for example), which could allow voters to identify themselves in a context of corruption or intimidation. This may be deemed improbable, but it remains a possibility."

If you want to check the votes yourself, they can be found at [3] --Henrygb 13:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

That is the uttermost nonsense. How does "A" inspect all the ballots? In a Dail constituency there are 45-60,000 of them. In an Australian House of Reps seat there are 80-90,000. Certainly in Australia it would be totally impossible. If "A" wants to influence an election there are a dozen easier ways to do it. This is entirely hypothetical, extremely improbable, and not worth including. To say that preferential voting is more susceptible to fraud than any other method of voting is completely false. Adam 13:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"How does A inspect all the ballots?" Well if A can, and they could in the electronic cases in Ireland (follow the links) as well as US elections (where newspapers looked at each hanging chad, then it is easy. And if A cannot, then elections become less transparent and easy to fix. Preferential voting provides a method for fraud which others do not: denial as "nonsense" is simple POV. --Henrygb 15:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

And just to prove it is possible, here is somebody's actual unique vote in Dublin North in 2002. It is not evidence of corruption (just of peculiar cross party voting, though in the event under Irish STV it went to Jim Glennon and stayed there and so helped contribute to Fine Gael's collapse and to Fianna Fail's victory), but it is evidence that corruption can easily work this way with preferential voting. I can easily look for any pattern of voting in this seat you might want to suggest.

1 Glennon,Jim,F.F.; 2 Boland,Cathal,F.G.; 3 Owen,Nora,F.G.; 4 Sargent,Trevor,G.P.; 5 Ryan,Seán,Lab; 6 Goulding,Ciaran,Non-P; 7 Daly,Clare,S.P.; 8 Kennedy,Michael,F.F.; 9 Wright,G.V.,F.F.; 10 Walshe,David Henry,C.C. CSP; 11 Quinn,Eamonn,Non-P; 12 Davis,Mick,S.F.

You cannot say "impossible" just because it is is not known in Australia. And it is specific to preferential voting. --Henrygb 23:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Fot this to be included in an article, it has to be shown that it has actually occurred, not just it is a remote theoretical possibility. Voters can be bribed or intimidated under any system. Adam 00:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Indeed they can, but in most systems not using preferential voting a secret ballot makes it harder. The issue has been identified as a possibility by an official source in one of the few countries using preferential voting for national elections, making it encyclopedic. --Henrygb 08:53, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Both Australia and Ireland have the secret ballot, so it is impossible for anyone to know how any individual voted, even by looking at all the ballot papers, even if this were allowed, which it certainly isn't here and shouldn't be anywhere. In the example you give above, are you telling me that this was the only voter out of 43,000 in Dublin North who voted in that way? I don't believe it. How could anyone possibly tell? They would not only have to inspect 43,000 ballot papers, but record the voting order on each of them and then compare them. And even if it were the only one with that voting pattern, what does it prove? That someone paid the voter to do it? Why would someone who wanted to influence an election do it in such a laborious way, and in a way that makes it possible to detect what they had done? Why not just pay voters to vote for Glennon, if that was what they wanted to do? The whole notion is ridiculous. Australia has been using preferential voting for federal, state and local government elections since 1918, and such an idea has never even been suggested, let alone demonstrated, and believe me Australia has a long history of electoral fraud of various kinds. If someone in Ireland has suggested it is as a possibility, that just shows they have too much time on their hands. Adam 10:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It appears that the key issue here isn't preferential voting, but the combination of preferential voting with the publication of individual votes in electronic, searchable format, which doesn't happen in Australia. The problem seems to be that easy access to these votes, together with the large number of unlikely "natural" votes, makes it possible for a voter to "prove" they have voted as desired, something that would otherwise be impossible. JPD 10:31, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

You may not believe the example vote was unique, but it is easy to check - follow the link. One other voter had the identical five early preferences but then stopped expressing any more preferences. Another five voters had the same first four preferences, but each of these had distinct overall patterns. Another twenty-five voters had the same first three preferences (a few identical patterns here), another 135 had the same two first preferences, and another 5,726 had the same first preference, out of the 43,942 total voters. --Henrygb 21:59, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I give in - I really didn't believe a national election authority could be so stupid as to allow full electronic scrutiny of its ballot papers, which seems to open the door to all kinds of mischief. As JPD says, the problem, if it is one in Ireland (and I'm still not persuaded that this actually happens), does not lie with preferential voting. It lies with post-election public access to ballot papers, which should never be allowed. In this country we trust our election authorities to count the ballots (under scrutiny of course), and the ballots are then destroyed, so the problem cannot arise. So if there is to be a paragraph written about this, it belongs in Irish election system rather than in this article. Adam 00:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

In this country … the ballots are then destroyed, In federal and most standard territory elections, though not in elections that use countback to fill seats which come up before general elections, rather than holding by-elections. Just being pedantic.

Still, I'm not convinced that it's not a problem of preferential voting, and as such I think it should be mentioned here. The bulk of the detail might be more appropriate in an article on the Irish election system, ’tis true, so it might just be a sentence directing those concerned to that article.

—Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 03:49, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Even in Ireland, it's not a "problem" at all: it is a hypothetical situation. I have conceded that it is a theoretical possibility, but so is the election being hijacked by aliens. I am still opposed to disproportionate mention of this completely hypothetical problem in an article of this length.

On Australian elections, are the actual ballot papers kept and recounted in Tasmania etc, or are the results simply recalculated from the initial count? In either case, the ballots are not available for public scrutiny, and even if kept they would be destroyed at the expiry of the Parliament when there can be no further countbacks. Adam 03:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

This section about Australian voting system needs clarification;

Voters preferences are now data-entered into computer systems, which then process the recorded votes to determine the results of the election.

At what point does this occur? I have scrutineered many vote counts. The "voters preferences" are sorted and counted at the voting booth immediately the polls close. They are recorded, in an agggregate, and when the number of ballots cast is reconsiled to the number of ballots given out it is all phoned through by the election official to some other official at the tally room. (as the scrutineer I am also phoning the results through to the candidate of the party). Of course at that point it will be entered into a computer - but the votes are in aggregates, as first preference votes and 2 party preferred (2PP), e.g. First Preference: J.Brown 1250, B.Green 350, R.White 1301, Informal 35. 2PP: J.Brown 1550, R.White 1351. There is a little bit more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

BTW where you have say 6 candidates on the ballot the preference distribution is always; which is ranked higher, Liberal/National or Labor? They never do the full preference distro through all the candidates, or at least I'v never seen it done like that.

[edit] Propose move

I propose we move this page to ranked ballot, as that seems to be the most unambiguous term we can use to describe the content of the article. As of now, the lead section looks more like a disambiguation page than it does the start of an article, and I don't see how we can overcome that unless we actually disambiguate preferential voting properly. Scott Ritchie 10:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

So are you proposing that "preferential voting" should become a disambiguation page? I agree that this page is valuable for that purpose. KVenzke 04:22, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I think people who live in countries where this system is actually used should have some say in this. In Australia we call it preferential voting. I'm not sure what they call it in Ireland, but I'm pretty sure it is not "ranked ballot." Adam 05:14, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I would oppose this move; these systems are called preferential voting in English. I would have no idea what ranked ballot means until I read the article. Adding an article preferential voting (disambiguation) may help. Septentrionalis 05:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Reading the article more thoroughly, I agree it's a mess. The disambiguation section is good. The next section is good if we are discussing ranked ballots, which is what this article apparently was for originally. The rest of the article contains information specific to Instant-runoff voting and Australian electoral system. KVenzke 06:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Not moved. And yes, please diambiguate. —Nightstallion (?) 08:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uniqueness of Votes

This section is fairly coherent and then drops way off the radar scope

To wit: "If there are large number of candidates, more common in STV elections, . . . .patterns were chosen by just one voter each."

This reads fine. I had a few people look over my shoulder and they got the point--a bit arcane but they got the point.

Here it gets murky: "The number of possible complete rankings with no ties is the factorial of the number of candidates, but with ties it's equal to the corresponding ordered Bell number and is asymptotic to .[1]"

I understand what it is trying to say but I think there are going to be more than a few that need a little more information. Are there any possible links to be made here?

Malangthon 13, Oct. 2006 12:35 EPT

I would drop the second paragraph altogether. --Henrygb 00:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RONR's multiple-member preferential voting

See Voting methods in Robert's Rules of Order#Single transferable vote. What is the name of the voting system that uses preferential ballots, but instead of transferring surplus votes, continues dropping the candidates with the lowest vote counts until the number of candidates remaining equals the number of seats to be filled? Captain Zyrain 00:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I remember now! It's preferential bloc voting. Captain Zyrain 04:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The preferential bloc voting method is what the City of Hopkins, Minnesota is considering, but I've never heard a name for it before. Does RROO use this term? (Also it is different from STV since multiple ranked votes are counted at once.) Tom Ruen 04:50, 27 September 2007 (UTC)