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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   4409 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 16, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Does this issue just not appear in practice because there just aren't ever that many candidates so the factorial of the number of candidates stays manageable?

Not sure about Australia, but the UK traditionally transported all of the ballots in one race to a central location and mixed them before counting them in order to obfuscate the precinct-level results. (This is logistically trivial if the largest race is a 65,000 elector Westminster seat). So summability is not relevant. For the London Mayoralty (which used an IRV-like system where voters are only allowed 2 preferences) running the whole count at one site is a logistical headache - when the Tories changed the counting system to FPTP this allowed the counters to count the mayoral vote at borough level and sum.

The largest single IRV/AV race is the Irish presidency. Does anyone know how that is counted?

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