Electoral systems discussion

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122917519#Comment_122917519

Which was caught by the participants in the process, given the open and transparent tallying process.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122917671#Comment_122917671

Yeah I wasn't having a dig at the process. It's just an eye-opening error, if as you say several hundred ballots were miscounted. A vote here and there could be a simple mistake but several hundred sounds like someone actively didn't fully understand what they were doing and were consistently making the same error over and over. If it was ultimately the party/tally people who uncovered it seems like an internal validation/checking process was also in error or just didn't exist (It shouldn't have to rely on the tally people to catch errors).

Somebody should review exactly what happened there so that a lesson can be learned - additional training/advice for new staff if required - lessons learned etc.

L1011

Sounds like bundles put in the wrong place.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122916550#Comment_122916550

The solution is voting machines. We trust machines with our money, why not with voting. No mistakes then.

The Electoral Commission, which has a new name that no one can pronounce, has today said up to half a million people could be on the register when they shouldn't be.

This is quite embarrassing.

hotmail.com

The head of the Electoral Commission gave a Father Ted style interview on Morning Ireland where he seemed to indicate all the problems in the system, offered no ways of correcting them and said he doesn't know when they will be corrected. And he admitted voter fraud is possible.

What an idiot.

https://www.rte.ie/news/election-24/2024/1203/1484435-electoral-register/

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918478#Comment_122918478

It's always fun having to rehearse arguements from twenty years ago with people who know nothing about the topic in hand.

The difference between financial transactions and voting transactions is that voting transactions must be secret, and must not be linked to the voter, whereas financial transactions must be linked to the account holder.

Perhaps you'd like to explain how we can record secure, auditable votes on voting machines and still keep those ballots secret?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918586#Comment_122918586

He's an idiot because he inherited a situation from previous governments over the past year and he hasn't yet fixed up 31 registers that have been neglected for decades?

He' s not the idiot around here.

corkie

@hotmail.com The solution is voting machines.

Your opening a big can of worms with a statement like that!, given the expensive farce they created when they last attempt that. Plenty of threads on e-voting. Useless search feature here and haven't found one yet to link.

I will edit this post when I find the one I was looking for!

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918659#Comment_122918659

Yes I withdraw the claim out of boredom on the topic.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918645#Comment_122918645

He doesn't appear to have come up with any solutions yet. He said he was going to carry out a study on postal voting "next year".

He doesn't appear to be a man in a rush and doesn't seem to be too bothered about it.

poppers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918586#Comment_122918586

If it was me id make everyone verify their registeration by linking it to your PPS numer, only allow people who verified registeration by 1st Oct be eligble to vote in the presidintal election due in oct 25.

Send out card to everyone on the register and give them the option of doing it online or inperson in either certain places eg post office SW office library counil office

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918478#Comment_122918478

Wouldn't surprise me if I'm one of those half million. Left during Covid and with so much of government in complete shutdown I didn't even try getting my record updated.

dulpit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918669#Comment_122918669

Isn't it better to do things correctly rather than just quickly?

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918837#Comment_122918837

Well he could say that he'll have the issues sorted out by the next general election.

I think we can assume there will be no changes by the Presidential Election next October.

Postal voting is something that be worked out fairly swiftly.

dulpit

I agree about postal voting, it's madness it's not possible.

Is this for the commission to implement? Or suggest to the government to allow for law change?

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918920#Comment_122918920

Postal voting is used for the Senate elections. No bother for them.

They even use fraction of a vote for transfers - now that would be possible with electronic counting.

Electronic counting is used extensively in the USA and appears to work quite well for them. They also use postal voting and early voting.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122919215#Comment_122919215

Fractional transfers are only used for the non-university panels due to the small size of the electorate (~1150) and number of seats on some panels making the quotas very low and fractional surpluses possibly being important.

The university panels have enough votes to not bother.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918669#Comment_122918669

How long did you spend looking at the stuff he's been just a tad busy with this year, what with the two elections and all? Their new organisation is just getting established after being set up last year with a fairly small staff

Peregrinus

I gotta point out that widening access to postal voting isn't a no-brainer.

The traditional concern about postal voting is that it's very difficult to ensure, in a postal voting system, that the secrecy of the ballot will be protected, and that voters will not be subject to undue influence when casting their votes. Irish electoral legislation has traditionally been very concerned with preventing electoral abuses, which is why we have such limited postal voting provisions now, and I don't think you can just wave your hands and say that these things aren't a concern any more. We only have to look at the carry-on of the Trumpistas on the other side of the Great Puddle to see how concerns about postal voting, even if they may have little underlying reality, can be exploited to undermine confidence in the integrity, and therefore the legitimacy, of the electoral process.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Many of the issues that give rise to a demand for postal voting could be addressed in other ways. For example, people who will be out of town on polling day could be allowed to vote in advance, but at a designated place, with a ballot box, rather than at home, by post ("early voting"). Or, it could be made possible to vote while you are physically present in one constituency, but in the election for a different constituency, in which you normally reside and are registered ("out-of-area voting").

Both early voting and out-of-area voting are avaiable in Australia. Postal voting is also available, but on strict conditions — 35-40% of applications for postal votes are rejected, and the number of early votes/out-of-area votes massively outweighs the number of postal votes cast.

I'm not saying that what works in Australia would necessariliy work in Ireland. But a report on postal voting isn't just asking "how quickly can we introduce postal voting?". It's "What problem are we trying to solve? What solutions are available? What are the pros and cons of each solution? Given all that, what's the optimal solution in our circumstances?"

And, key factor that everyone seems to be ignoring; while the Electoral Commission can produce such a report, they can't implement it; voting is controlled by legislation, and any change will require an Electoral Amendment Act to be drafted, introduced into the Oireachtas, debated, passed and brought into force. That's a political process in which the Electoral Commission has no role at all, and over which it has no authority. There is no point in the Electoral Commission even produce a report or recommendation unless there is the political appetite to legislate on the subject.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122919224#Comment_122919224

That is true for fractional transfers if counting by hand. However, if counting by computer, fractional transfers becomes straightforward.

It would also make all votes count equally when a candidate gets a surplus whether on the first count or after the last count for that candidate as they are declared elected.

I have always wondered how they select the ballots to be transferred when a surplus occurs. Apparently (I may be wrong in this) for the first count they sort the votes in relation to second preference so that an equal number gets transferred for each second preference candidate. Otherwise, it is last in, first out.

So if I vote No. 1 for a successful candidate my vote sticks, but if I vote No. 6, my vote may travel to my No. 7 or No. 8 depending on which one is still in the race.

Good enough for hand counting but eCounting would be able to make all votes count the same. That is, a candidate requiring a 10,000 quota, but achieving 11,000 votes on the 10th count, each and every vot cast for them would be reduced to 0.9 votes, and 0.1 vote would transfer to the next preference - if any.

Such a scheme could make for a slightly different result.

corkie

@Sam Russell "I have always wondered how they select the ballots to be transferred when a surplus occurs."

They don't select individual ballots! I think it is calculated on percentages of votes. And surplus calculated that way.

martingriff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122911109#Comment_122911109

The US election final count only ended last week

martingriff

It took what 4 days it's not like it's ages

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122920273#Comment_122920273

Actually the last House seat was settled yesterday - Democrat flipped a Republican seat in Ca. Republicans now have a five seat majority.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122920241#Comment_122920241

They bundle the votes in groups of fifty. They take them from the top, and sort them by next valid preference.

corkie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122920373#Comment_122920373

On mobile, we were both correct:-

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/ireland-voting-how-is-surplus-zlNVQ4ALTwSN_X69E4Wglw

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122920241#Comment_122920241

They have to use individual ballots or else you could never calculate further preferences

It is different depending on when the surplus occurs

Count 1 - count the second preferences on every ballot, sort in to stacks. Figure out the distribution based on % - e.g. 1,000 surplus, 25% go to Candidate B, grab 250 off their stack. 14% go to Candidate C, grab 140 off their stack. Distribute

Any further count - take the number required from the top of the stack, distribute.

This is why a second preference given to someone who does not get elected on count 1, but does then get elected later never gets transferred - it will never be moved. I've seen candidates who got #2s from everywhere but didn't get in as those papers never moved after the first count.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122920241#Comment_122920241

There are calculations carried out to determine the numbers to be transferred to each other candidate but at the end of the day individual ballots are physically chosen for the transfers (which has ramifications for later transfers)

There are two possible scenarios:

1. Someone gets elected on the first count

The quota here was 13,083. That's how many ballots need to stay with MHR. His surplus of 5,513 can be transferred to others. In order to determine how many transfer to whom they examine all of his ballots and count the #2 preferences for each other candidate. They divide the ballots into different piles depending on who has the number #2 preference on them. There may be a small number of ballots with no #2 on them as well. They are ignored for the transfer calculations.

They then calculate the number of transfers that each other candidate should get on a pro-rata basis. DHR ended up getting 2,633 of the 5,513 transfers or 47.76% of the total to be transferred. Working backwards we can calculate that the pile that had MHR #1 and DHR #2 had ~8.8k ballots in it (we can't be exactly certain as we don't know how many ballots were out there which only had MHR #1 on them). So they just lifted the top 2,633 from that pile and physically transferred them over to DHR. They would have done similar with all of the other candidates.

There is an element of randomization in whichever ballots end up on the top of each pile - which are the ones chosen for the transfers. (There is a step early in the count process where all of the ballots are thrown into a large wooden box and mixed up - this ensures that ballots from the same polling stations aren't all clumped together)

2. Someone gets elected on a subsequent count

This one caught out a few people at the weekend. Gary Gannon exceeded the quota of 6,551 on the 8th count. That gave him a surplus of 930 votes to be transferred. Some people were surprised to see Gerard Hutch only get 18 of those transfers. After all Gary Gannon was drawing a lot of his support from the same north inner city part of the constituency as Gerard Hutch.

The thing that they missed was that those votes weren't actually Gary Gannon's votes originally - they were votes that had recently transferred to him. That's because when somebody gets elected after the first count all of their ballots are not examined in order to determine future transfers. No. Instead only the block of votes in the count that put them over the quota are examined.

To better understand it we can look at the previous count.

Neasa Hourigan of the Green Party had been eliminated and all of her votes were now transferred to the remaining candidates. Hourigan is somebody, unlike Gary Gannon and Gerard Hutch, did not grow up in the north inner city. It's likely a lot of her vote came from some of the more middle class parts of the constituency. We can see that Gerard Hutch got by far the fewest number of transfers from her (26). Gary Gannon got the most (949), so much so that he passed the quota and was elected. It was those 949 votes that were the votes that were examined for the transfers for Gary Gannon in Count 9. That is why Gerard Hutch did so badly with them. They were mostly Green Party votes - not Gary Gannon votes.

As for the actual process. They would have examined all 949 ballots that transferred to Gannon in Count #8 and split them into piles depending on which remaining candidate had the next highest preference. Since this was a later count there would be a larger number of ballots where no remaining candidate was listed as a lower preference - these are deemed non-transferrable. In this exact case when non-transferrable ballots were discounted the total available to transfer was only 881. Since this number was lower than the surplus to be transferred in Count 9 (930) all of them were transferred. Had that not been the case they would have done pro-rate calculations and selected ballots from the top of each pile to be physically transferred.

martingriff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122918728#Comment_122918728

That is part of the problem for sure people updating the register and also making sure if they more areas to take them off the other. That is why the 1 register for the whole country be a whole lot better.

I was working in my local council for summer when they tried to clean it up the last time. Early 00's and a letter was send out to everyone on the register with letters like sure they are dead for x years did ye not know to that person moved away how did ye not know

L1011

The register has been in ribbons since the final services charges/water charges collections; which were mostly about 1995 - the rates collectors used to keep the register updated. It has been getting ever more inaccurate and bloated since.