[maemo-community] STV voting strategy

[From: Frantisek Dufka]

Dave Neary wrote:
> Jaffa has 48 first round votes, the quota is 27.
> 
> We count all of Jaffa's 2nd preferences:
...
> We multiply the number of 2nd preferences by 21/48

Ah I see. This is good. So all #2 preferences are counted.

My understanding was that since 40% of the votes for Jaffa were surplus 
this implies that 60% of #2 positions were not considered at all since 
those people already voted for Jaffa. I am happy I was wrong.


> The question is *which* 8 of the 18 votes that were Jaffa 1, Tim 2 (or
> Jaffa 1, GA 2, Tim 3, since GA is no longer being considered) get
> transferred to Tim's pile.
> 
> This has an incidence if Tim ends up with a surplus, or gets eliminated
> later, since in that case, we move down to the next preference on the
> ballot, and if there's a ballot that has 1. Jaffa, 2. Tim, 3. sjgadsby,
> and another that has 1. Jaffa, 2. Tim, 3. Kees, then depending on which
> of the two ballots gets added to Tim's pile, Kees or Stephen end up with
> the vote later.

Yes, this is disturbing just as described here 
http://stv.sourceforge.net/votingmethods/random

"It is important to note is that changing the order of the ballots can 
change the outcome of the election. In reality, this will only happen in 
a close election. However, many people find this aspect disturbing."

> 
> There is another way to count, which only makes sense with electronic
> counting (and is thus harder to verify), and that's fractional transfers.
...
> We could use fractional transfer if you want 

Yes please if it makes result less random and more fair.

> Yes, this is true. In STV, you are voting primarily to elect your
> preferred candidate and ordering is very important.

This is what worries me since I need to decide between person A or B 
while I want both of them. But I'll get used to it :-)

Frantisek