[no subject]

- with Random Transfer, 20 ballots are picked randomly (assuming those
60 votes are already random you can just pick last 20 received, first
20, or more complex randomizing methods). The thing is that this way
you completely lose the second order preference of the remaining 40
ballots and assume the 20 ones you randomly picked are a
representative enough sample.

- with Fractional Transfer you don't transfer a sample but *all* the
60 ballots with a fractional weight that makes them sum up to the
surplus (20 in the example). This way you're caring about all
preferences of all ballots, giving a clearly fairer representation of
the electors' desires. The only downside of this method it that it is
more complex, to apply not to understand (i.e. you cannot count
ballots by hand), but given that we're already using a software to
count the ballots I really don't see the point.

In my opinion, if the original decision of the election committee is
not clear (and "we wanted to use the same method of Maemo" IMHO is not
a decision), we should just use the fairest method, which is
undoubtedly fractional transfer.

Quoting from http://www.openstv.org/votingmethods/random:
"It is important to note is that changing the order of the ballots can
change the outcome of the election. In reality, this will only happen
in a close election. However, many people find this aspect
disturbing."

I don't speak and understand english very well but from what I
understood about the meaning of "close election" ours certainly is,
we're electing 7 candidates over 10 with 211 ballots, there is no need
to do the math to understand that the order of the ballots can change
the results. Random transfer might work well when you have big numbers
but can easily be unfair in a little election like this.


Filippo

PS. In case it wasn't clear, this is a +1 to Dave's challenge :-P