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Ooh! Ooh! I voted!
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From that post you linked I can say you're much younger than I thought you were!sock puppet wrote: »Have you changed your username since? Just that The Economist would be a slightly unusual username for an 18 year old:pac:
Edited to add:
Madam, – I was in the RDS during the election count and I witnessed first hand that one vote can make a difference. Votes were being counted for a local election area in Dublin and two candidates from the same party were running neck and neck from the outset. Throughout the count they were scarcely 10 votes apart and towards the end it became apparent that only one of them would be elected, on the last seat. Every transfer was going to make a difference and in the end one of them had two votes less than the other and was duly eliminated. His transfers brought his party colleague over the line and into the council.
The gap of two votes means that if one voter had placed him as a higher preference than the other candidate, then it would have been a tie. One more vote and he would have taken the seat in place of his colleague.
The eliminated candidate called for a recount, but the gap of two votes was still there after all the votes were checked and counted again.
In every locality there must be similar stories. However, in most circumstances a single vote is unlikely to make a big difference to the outcome. Rather than this being a problem, I suggest it is entirely the point. Voting is one of the most important examples of collective action: we vote together, as families, communities, co-workers and other groups of shared interest. Elections are all about voting collectively, not as individuals, and choosing candidates who best serve our collective interests.
Next time, I hope more people vote – for whatever reason. – Yours, etc,
NAT O’CONNOR,
Tyrconnell Road,
Inchicore,
Dublin 8.
We all voted the way we voted last week and nothing will change that. However there is a referendum on the way and it's reasonably likely that the government will fall in the next year or so. Please at least consider the consequences of your vote, even if it's only a third or fourth preference.0 -
But transfers are a lottery..... It's retarded.0
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Anne-Marie!! wrote: »Used the age old and proven "eeny meeny miny mo"......"O, you look nice".... "You're smiling, you get no.1"...."why does this man not have a picture? Im not voting for him"...."blaaaah this is boring, I've never even heard of libertas but it sounds fun, theres no.2 for ya"...
!
The dangers of democracy right here.0 -
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Anne-Marie!! wrote: »For the first time
And what a crappy, anticlimatic experience it was. Wander in, a few auld fellas around the place, grab the paper, into the booth.
Used the age old and proven "eeny meeny miny mo"......"O, you look nice".... "You're smiling, you get no.1"...."why does this man not have a picture? Im not voting for him"...."blaaaah this is boring, I've never even heard of libertas but it sounds fun, theres no.2 for ya"...
Ah, teenage logic. It just wasn't as exciting and I'm-changing-the-worldish as expected :rolleyes: Blaaahhhh.
Did yez all vote?!
yawn. how about reading the political literature next time?0 -
The Economist wrote: »No they're not.The simplest methods of transferring surpluses under STV involve an element of randomness; partially random systems are used in the Republic of Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meek%27s_method#Hare_methodInitial surplus
Suppose candidate X, at a certain stage of the count, has 190 votes, and the quota is 200. Now X receives 30 votes transferred from candidate Y (after Y was either elected or eliminated). This gives X a total of 220 votes, i.e. a surplus of 20 to be transferred. But which 20 votes will be transferred?
[edit] Hare method
20 votes are drawn at random from the 30 received from Y's transfers. These 20 votes are each transferred to the next available preference after X stated on the ballot, skipping those that have already been elected or eliminated. In a manual count of paper ballots, this is the easiest method to implement; it is close to Thomas Hare's original proposal in 1857. It is used in all universal suffrage elections in the Republic of Ireland. This is analogous to what happens in the children-voting example above. Some people consider it fair in that, with 200 required for election, the group of 230 with first-preference Y get to influence other preferences, whereas the group of only 190 with first-preference X should just be satisfied to get their candidate elected. But some other people feel the group of 190 should get more influence on other preferences (as in Meek's method below). Also, exhausted ballots are excluded, so if more than 10 of the 30 votes have no preference stated after X, then it is impossible to select 20 to transfer and so some votes must be wasted.
Your transfer will only make a difference if it's randomly selected. Retarded.0 -
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The Economist wrote: »It wouldn't work at educating those who don't know how to vote though, because they'll pick Home Ec/Woodwork/Physics instead. It might be a good idea if we want to get people into stuff like policy jobs, though.
Yeah, I agree it won't necessarily educate those who don't know how to vote, I was just saying it would be an interesting and ,potentially, a very beneficial subject to do at LC level.0 -
Your transfer will only make a difference if it's randomly selected. Retarded.
Wikipedia has misled you, young padawan.
Your statement "[y]our transfer will only make a difference if it's randomly selected" is wrong.
Suppose the quota is 9,000 and I get 10,000 first preferences; leaving me with 1,000 surplus. You suggest a random number of these are transferred. That is not true.
Every one of my votes is looked at again and it is found that 50% of them have you as number 2, and 20% have Piste as number 2. The distribution is not random. You then receive 500 of the available votes and Piste gets 200. Here your statement that your transfer only counts if randomly selected is not true at all, it's proportional to the nearest vote.
Where the "randomness" comes in (it's not actually random, I'll get to that in a sec) is to see what happens to the third preferences. So let's say you only needed 400 of the 500 votes that I transferred to you. The question then becomes which 100 votes are transferred. This is somewhat random, but it's not really, for two reasons:- If randomly selected from the votes, on average the selection will represent the true preferences
- Transfers are non-random. In fact you can predict them remarkably well e.g. FF transfers to FF and not to FG. This makes even the non-random distribution less random
So if the third preference bundle selected does not represent the full sample, and if the votes don't follow the usual FF-FF transfer routine, and if the numbers of transfers are high enough to tip the balance; then yes you a bit of a lottery system. That's why candidates may request re-count third preferences as an extra back-up system.
So, no, I wouldn't call the PR-STV method of transfers either random or retarded.0 -
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The Economist wrote: »Where the "randomness" comes in (it's not actually random, I'll get to that in a sec) is to see what happens to the third preferences. So let's say you only needed 400 of the 500 votes that I transferred to you. The question then becomes which 100 votes are transferred. This is somewhat random, but it's not really, for two reasons:The Economist wrote: »
- If randomly selected from the votes, on average the selection will represent the true preferences
- Transfers are non-random. In fact you can predict them remarkably well e.g. FF transfers to FF and not to FG. This makes even the non-random distribution less random
The Economist wrote: »Finally it's important to note that in this case, you're only talking about transferring 100 votes which in our little example is 1% of quota. Typically these votes don't tip the balance either way (though they may) because typically nobody reaches quota at the end and rather it's a "last man standing" situation.The Economist wrote: »So if the third preference bundle selected does not represent the full sample, and if the votes don't follow the usual FF-FF transfer routine, and if the numbers of transfers are high enough to tip the balance; then yes you a bit of a lottery system. That's why candidates may request re-count third preferences as an extra back-up system.
No. It is a lottery system whether the third preference bundle represents the full sample or not, you just happen to have been lucky when it does represent it. This may just be my ignorance of the system, but how does a recount change this?0 -
What does 'somewhat random' mean?
There's also the slight problem that the law of large numbers causes the terms we use. "Random" is often used by the public to mean "by chance" or "coincidence" or "unusual" and that kind of thing. But if you take a random sample from a distribution, the distribution of the random sample will converge to that of the original distribution quite quickly.Speak plainly and honestly, either they are chosen randomly and without a specific method, or they are not, there is no 'somewhat random'. Just because you may believe that external forces guide the hand of chance doesn't make random any less than random...
In our specific case of PR-STV, the first set of transfers are completely non-random, they're exactly proportional (to the nearest whole number) to the actual second-preference. However the third preferences are randomly selected from the second-preferences so there is an element of randomness there. Thus it isn't fully random (it's not just every sixth vote) but it isn't fully representative either. There's a bit of a mix.So you're saying that 1. Ok, they're random, but 1 time out of 6 a dice will roll a three... and 2. Herd mentality is in fact rampant, which would seem to me, as I mentioned before, as a block to crowd wisdom...- Your best estimate of the true distibution of a votes with a subsample of b votes is the distribution implied from the subsample b. Check it out in Excel with the =rand() command.
- Herding only matters if the way I vote affects the way you vote. Herding is irrelevant within one ballot paper. Say you want a FG govt and I want FF. It does not matter that you have FG as 1, 2, 3 and I have FF as 1, 2, 3 since it reflects our preferences. Herding matters when I convince you that I'm voting Labour, and then you change your vote to keep Labour out (by voting FF), then I vote FF anyway.
Seems a bit of a turn-around from your original declaration that every vote counts...No. It is a lottery system whether the third preference bundle represents the full sample or not, you just happen to have been lucky when it does represent it.This may just be my ignorance of the system, but how does a recount change this?0
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