Electoral systems discussion

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610507#Comment_122610507

Seriously?

The current system prevents vote selling buying by design, and you don't see the obvious connection between that design and the absence of vote selling convictions?

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610341#Comment_122610341

They could have given them a No.1 but in the case of a lot of candidates they didn't, not even getting 1%, and in one EP candidate's case, not even 0.1%.

These candidates are not helping the democratic process, they're hindering it and in some cases using the platform of the election to push extremist racist and/or religious agendas which would not otherwise gain such publicity due to their nature and unpopularity.

Extremists getting a leaflet into hundreds of thousands of homes at the expense of a tiny depost, or just a few signatures, is an abuse.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610476#Comment_122610476

Exactly - millions of voters in FPTP in the UK are disenfranchised because they live in a 'safe' seat for a party they abhor, so they might as well make a protest vote out of it.

This thinking then fed into the Brexit vote… not everyone who voted Leave wanted to leave.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610606#Comment_122610606

It does, but some want a large expansion of postal voting, which removes those protections.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122609812#Comment_122609812

But, by definition, it has to be a unique pattern of preferences, so you could only use this to identify one bought vote. To win the election corruptly, you're going to need to buy more than one vote — a lot more — and you'll need a different unique pattern of preferences for each vote that you wish to buy.

Actually spotting all of those in a manual count is impossible. At no point are all the preferences on a ballot paper examined together; in each count the scrutioneer is only looking to identify the effective preference and put the ballot paper in the correct pile; the 27 preferences below it are not relevant and the ballot paper just isn't displayed for long enough for an election observer to note and record all the preferences.

(Of course, if you had an electronic counting system, then all the preferences on the ballot paper would be scanned and recorded together, so if you had access to this system, you could identify all the ballots with unique preference patterns. So, if this argument carries any weight at all, it's an argument against automated counting systems.)

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610735#Comment_122610735

That's exactly my argument - against any system that releases voting details for research purposes.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610864#Comment_122610864

If you're not the corrupt politician who has bought the vote, even if you spot the unique pattern and even if you conclude that the most likely explanation for this pattern is that the vote was bought, you'll have no way of identifying who cast the vote. Only people actually involved in the corrupt transaction can know that.

The whole point about voting is that, while your identity is secret, your vote is public — it has to be, or it can't have any effect on the outcome of the election, which would defeat the whole point of voting.

The first preference on every ballot paper will be counted and the numbers published, and your first preference, or mine, will be reflected in the numbers published. The second preference on many ballot papers will be counted and reflected in the published numbers — exactly how many depend on how the count unfolds. And so on — every preference you write down may be counted and the result published. If you vote for no-hope candidate A, who is eliminated on the first count, and then transfer to no-hoper B, eliminated on a later count, and then no-hoper C, eliminated still later, everyone will know the number of ballot papers who gave thei first four preferences to A, B, C, someone else, in that order, and yours will be one of those papers.

In short, every preference you write on the ballot paper is potentially knowable to the world; some at least of them will be actually known. The only thing that isn't knowable is that you are the person who cast this particular vote.

Given all that, I'm not sure that making data from ballot papers avialable for research or scrutiny violates any fundamental principle. The only thing that's secret about your vote is your identity; nothing else. In particular, the details of how the vote was cast are not secret at all.

We need not be concerned that, even if you have ordered your preferences in a unique way, that you can be identified. Your vote can be identified as unique, but it can't be identified as your vote unless you make it known to someone that that is how you cast your vote, in which case the person who has disclosed your identity as the voter who cast this ballot is you.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610701#Comment_122610701

That final point I'll agree with. I'm not sure exactly which election campaigns it applies to but it certainly did to the recent European elections where every candidate got to send a similar card in the post for free it seems. I got one from an absolute conspiracy theorist candidate and a few others from anti-immigrant candidates.

That's easily resolved though by no longer having the state pay for those cards - as opposed to restricting people from running for office in the first place.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610476#Comment_122610476

Huh? Why would there be more likely to be a worthy candidate in a PRSTV election than a FPTP election?

If you want to send an "Up yours" message in a PR-STV election you can do so in exactly the same way. You simply give your number "1" or even an "X" to a "joke" candidate in exactly the same way as an FPTV vote and leave all of the other boxes empty.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610890#Comment_122610890

That's the problem though. In creating a system that facilitates a voter to disclose their vote to a third party, you create a system that facilitates vote selling and duress voting.

While you can't identify who specifically cast a vote, the fact that a VERY specific vote was cast with a VERY specific pattern of preferences does confirm that specific vote has been cast - as instructed or as bought and paid for.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122611825#Comment_122611825

Have you considered a career writing low-rent crime fiction? That is about as plausible as a standard airport novel plot.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122611744#Comment_122611744

They need to have some skin in the game, at present it's possible to run a "campaign" at zero cost except to the taxpayer. These people have no intention of being elected but are just using it as a publicity stunt.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612018#Comment_122612018

I agree with you on that. If they want to send the electorate election literature then they should pay the price for that from their own pocket.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122611865#Comment_122611865

It's implausible because just about every voting system around the world is set up to make it impossible.

It's a bit like saying, well no-one does armed robberies in banks these days, so we're just going to leave the doors unlocked at night and leave the safe open. What could possibly go wrong?

You might want to look up what the security mindset means.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122611789#Comment_122611789

The running of joke (and some non-joke single-issue) candidates in the UK is really driven by declarations being televised live rather than the voting system.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122611825#Comment_122611825

I think the notion of corruptly buying enough votes to win elections, and seeking to verify each corrupt transaction by giving every different voter a unique pattern of preferences that he must express, is wildly implausible.

I would also point out that it's highly detectable. All of the corrupt voters who have entered into this Faustian pact will of couse put the same candidate as their no. 1 preference — nobody pays voters to vote for a different candidate. So we'll have a large number of voters, each of whom has a unique patter of preferences, and all of whom have given their first preference to the same candidate. You'll know this scam has been worked, and you'll know which candidate worked it. And, for good measure, you'll know at which polling station and in which box the corrupted votes were cast. There' inevitably be other voters who were approached to join in the scam but declined. It won't be difficult to crack this case.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612529#Comment_122612529

I think you've given enough of the "how the wannabe mastermind election rigger gets caught" here to finish off the novel plot!

There's also how a large group of people coming in and slowly transcribing their own, special, veeery specific pattern of preferences on to ballots might get noticed by either centre staff or personation agents.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612529#Comment_122612529

Quite a few errors there. First, on the general point, elections are turning on quite small quantities all around the world. Think of the Pennsylvania effect in the US, where one state will effectively decide the outcome of the election. Think of the work that Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook for Trump 2016 and the Brexit referendum - which all revolved around turning quite small numbers of voters in key areas to swing the overall election result - micro targeting. So quite a small number of votes may well have a significant impact for a given candidate, and ultimately for the choice of government.

And no, they don't all have vote for the same No1 candidate. They could safely give their 1, 2, 3 to no hoper candidates knowing that the vote will travel and finally end up where they want it. Or they could focus on party rather than individual, with two or maybe three candidates for one party.

How exactly will you identify these 'corrupt votes' and distinguish them from the 'down the line' voters who fill out all preferences on their vote?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612536#Comment_122612536

You do know that polling booths are private, right? There's a reason why they're private - to protect the secrecy of the ballot. And if anyone wants to prepare their vote preferences and transcribe them in the booth, that is entirely legitimate, and indeed is good practice as ballot papers get larger.

No one sees their "own, special, veeery specific pattern of preferences" until the paper is unfolded when the box is opened in the count centre, which is FAR too late to do anything about it. 

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612610#Comment_122612610

Your first paragraph isn't relevant in a world of STV. Your second could still be detected by finding that these extremely odd pattern papers all ended up on one stack; and would fail if somehow one of the no-hopers actually got in or hung on til all seats were filled.

Have you seen the size of polling booths these days? You are very, very visible inside them.

You have spent far too long devising this concept to ever be convinced that its unfeasible and, honestly, arguing on paranoid.

Peregrinus

You can only win an election by buying a small number of votes corruptly if you know pretty exactly how many genuine votes you're going to get. Which, of course you don't. To be confident of winning the election you need to buy as many corrupt votes as you require on your worst-case scenario for the number of genuine votes you might get.

And, while you are correct to say that not every corrupt vote in this schem has to have the corrupt candidate or party as the first preference, they do all — every single one of them — have to have the corrupt candidate or party as the first effective preference. So the pattern will be obvious.

You don't have to categorically identify every corrupt vote to know that this scam is being worked. It's already been pointed out in the thread — by you, if I recall correctly — that a vote with a unique pattern of preferences is obviously corrupt. In fact there's a small chance that it's not corrupt, but if you have an anomalous number of such votes effective for the same candidate or party, then you know that the bulk of them are corrupt, you know the scam is being worked, and you know who is working it.

You can be reasonably confident that there are voters out there who know about the scam because they were asked to participate but declined, either because they couldn't stomach the dishonesty involved, or they couldn't stomach the candidate/party involved, or both. Finding some of those voters and getting them to say what approach was made to them won't be difficult. Case closed.

L1011

Also, in a smaller race, having anything other than the 1 as your effective candidate starts massively reducing the potential set of unique combinations anyway - the 1 can't be someone else who has any chance of getting elected so you are reducing the potential pick to maybe three out of, say, ten candidates; the second to 2 (plus possibly your corrupt vote-buyer) and so on. This hammers the set down.

There's so many holes in this it couldn't be a good crime thriller plotline. But I'd read it when waiting for a flight.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612625#Comment_122612625

OK, so you want specific Irish examples then. The outcome of the last election was very close, to the extent that it took weeks for parties to come together and make a government. We could have ended up with a very different government, if a small number of FF or FG seats had gone to SF, allowing them to form a government with some small parties and independents. You don't need millions of votes to swing an election.

Yes, I've seen polling booths - and the way they have four booths in a circle, so it's not hard for anyone who doesn't want to be seen by certain parties in the room to position themselves appropriately.

But more importantly, what are "extremely odd pattern papers" and how do you distinguish these from papers from down-the-line voters?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612680#Comment_122612680

The history of election fraud disagrees with you. No one knows EXACTLY how many votes a candidate is going to get, but microtargeting is allowing interested parties to have very good information about voter preferences and likely turnout. It is an inexact science and there are no guarantees about any particular outcome, but with the very high stakes, if there is a weakness in the system, it will be found and exposed.

I absolutely didn't say that "that a vote with a unique pattern of preferences is obviously corrupt". I can't see how any vote counter or investigator would distinguish between a 'bought' vote with a unique pattern of preferences and a down-the-line voter with a unusual pattern of preferences. I've done enough vote tallying over the years to know that voters are hugely unpredictable, and you'll see votes that appear to be directly contradictory in any political analysis, swinging wildly from far right to far left and back again in the sequence of preferences. I've often thought when tallying that I'd love to take that particular voter out for a pint to better understand their thinking, but you only get about a second per vote when tallying, so you don't get to think too much about it.

You're right to say that it would be tricky to keep a conspiracy like this under wraps, but you can say the same about any criminal conspiracy. There are communities in Dublin where no one buys cigarettes from shops, because everyone, or the vast majority, buy smuggled cigarettes - an obvious criminal conspiracy happening in clear light of day. How easy is it to buy weed and harder drugs - an obvious criminal conspiracy happening in clear light of day.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612758#Comment_122612758

Nobody knows in advance what small number of votes need to be manipulated, so this scheme still wouldn't work; but SF only had a "small number" of unelected candidates to begin with. One was 400 short, the others all over 1000 short - one was 4000 short.

Are you going to come up with 4000 unique ballots, find 4000 voters who will do it and never blab about it and somehow never ask anyone who will refuse and go to the Gardai immediatey per constituency?

Paranoid nonsense.

Sam Russell

I think there are much better ways of corrupting an election used over many parts of the globe.

It is simply ballot box stuffing. Fill the box with many many votes already marked as desired. Of course, a simpler way is just to declare the desired result without bothering to even count the votes.

Why complicate crooked elections.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612783#Comment_122612783

300-odd votes between getting elected and not getting elected.

200 odd votes between getting elected and not getting elected.

400 votes exactly between getting elected and not getting elected.

You don't have to push the dial hugely to influence election outcomes.

Why would you want to open up a long sealed exposure in the election system, so that a few academics can pore over the details of every vote? What benefit arises for democracy from that?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612882#Comment_122612882

Not one of those would have changed the outcome of the election as the coalition and opposition numbers stay exactly the same.

Your paranoia fails to realise that you'd need to know the outcome in advance to only bribe enough people to just swing it and not get caught with silly swings.

I'm not engaging in this nonsense any further

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122612935#Comment_122612935

They would have changed the other potential coalitions that could have come into Government.

And then there's duress voting, which we haven't discussed at all.

Sam Russell

Dick Spring lost his seat by 9 votes. I doubt there was even a sniff of any irregularities in that election.

This whole discussion is just nonsense. It does not happen.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122613171#Comment_122613171

You're right. It does not happen, because the current system stops it from happening.

Taking away the features that stop it from happening is not a sensible approach.

Hotblack Desiato

Dick Spring didn't narrowly lose his seat, he kept his seat in 1987 by four votes, so even tighter!