Re: [STV-discuss] Ballot file enhancements
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From: Jay B. <bat...@si...> - 2006-08-18 11:24:44
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Thanks for the reply. I may end up handling this slightly differently than originally expected, so I may not need to make this change. (I'm going to add some PHP-style stuff to *collect* votes on our website, try to collect them *all* there (even if we, the admins, enter hand-supplied ballots using a back end interface), then have the php code output a file that contains the resulting votes. I can write this code to put the information out in a format OpenSTV can already consume. If this ends up being the direction I take, I'll not need to push anything back. But if we do end up doing the work, I'll be happy to contribute it. Thanks for your replies. Cheers -jb BTW -- I'd already made our counting method choice before I received your email, and ended up choosing BC (vs. Meek), mostly because I didn't know any better. Too late now to change it. But at least there's *something* specified. :-) Thanks. On Aug 16, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: > At 8:54 AM -0400 8/16/06, Jeffrey O'Neill wrote: >> I bet excel has an option to export csv files with other delimeters. >> I only have OpenOffice and I think it does this (at least it reads >> files with other delimiters). > > Excel will export with tab or space delimiters (in the latter case, > variable-length strings of spaces for formatting purposes). > > At 1:17 AM -0400 8/16/06, Jay Batson wrote: >> There's a second problem I'd like to see solved, too: We'll only >> have around 50 or so votes (for 5 seats), and historically we've >> recorded the name of the voting member alongside their votes. If >> we put this info into the spreadsheet, it would introduce info >> into the input file that OpenSTV would barf on. > > It'd be nice for OpenSTV to trim comments (by some definition of > comment) from input lines, I agree. My Perl counter preprocesses a > ballot line with something like ^\s*(.*)(#.*)? (in principle, with > suitable greed adjustments, saving \1, and then silently discarding > the line if the result is empty. > > However, it's easy to deal with this in Excel; I can think of two > methods. > > 1. Select the column of names, clear it, save as tab-separated > text, and then undo the clear. > > 2. Select the rankings without the names, paste into another sheet, > and then save the second sheet as tab-separated text. Text-format > saves only a single sheet. > >> The most useful scenario for us would be to use a voting process >> we'll collect ballots, ballot-counters will sit and enter the >> ballot choices into an Excel spreadsheet, go through them a second >> time to confirm entries, and then feed the resulting file into >> OpenSTV. > > I've been through processes like this. It works fairly well, but > make sure that a different person is looking at the paper ballots > for the check than for the count. If you have the volunteers, > consider entering the election twice, with independent counters, > and if the two results don't agree, compare them (to make that > easier, number the ballots before counting to help ensure that > they're entered in the same order). > > At 1:17 AM -0400 8/16/06, Jay Batson wrote: >> I'm hoping to be using OpenSTV in an election in September for the >> Directors of a non-profit. > > Free (as in beer) advice: if you haven't done this already, make > sure that the group has agreed on a specific counting method before > the election. I helped count a Green Party election once in which > the BC and Meek results were different, and an argument over the > results lasted more than a year. > > It's less important which method you choose than that you choose > one in advance. In my view (and I think Jeff's), Meek is always > preferable, unless you want to count by hand. BC is hard to count > by hand when you have more than two seats to fill, and I'd strongly > resist any of the other hand-count-friendly methods (especially > with only 50 ballots). > > > -- > /Jonathan Lundell. ---------- Jay Batson Acting Managing Director, Chairman bat...@si... +1-978-824-0111 |