Something I want to bring up before it’s too late instead of after :
I would like to get a version of the raw ballots cast in this election. No identifying info. Just an account of the approvals made by each ballot. Order doesn’t matter.
The point: approval voting wasn’t designed for multi-winner elections, although it’s served us well anyway so far. I would like to run the ballots through 4 other methods (although all closely related), based on approval voting ballots, that were designed to pick multiple winners.
Just to see what happens. The other methods are designed to break up “tyranny of the majority cabals” for more representative results. For example, if there are 100 voters here, 60 vote for the 5 oldest candidates, and 40 for the 5 youngest, under pure approval voting the 5 oldest will win all of the positions. Under any of the other schemes, only 3 of the oldest will win. Since 2/5th of the voters wanted a younger candidate, they’ll get 2/5th of the winners (which is, of course, 2 positions out of the 5 winners).
It would at least be interesting to see whether “the math” does detect “cabals” in our voting patterns, and, if so, whether the different methods agree on what they are.
The best way to ensure this would be to make a pull request to PEP 8102 with how to accomplish what you’re requesting.
If helios doesn’t support or accommodate this, it may be too late as I personally don’t feel comfortable changing voting platforms at the last minute… though others may deem it necessary, and that could absolutely overrule my concern.
Ah, fudge. Helios. I have no idea whether that allows extracting anonymized ballots, but a quick scan of the top-level docs isn’t encouraging on that count.
I certainly don’t suggest changing the voting system at this late stage. Never mind .