Talk:Exhaustive ballot

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Both of the external links/refs for this article are broken. Does anyone have any others? Ron Duvall (talk) 00:24, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I fixed the DFL call link that I added, although such a weird name, perhaps no hope it'll stay active. I mainly linked it for an explicit example of elimination rules. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Exhaustive ballot" election

Copied from Talk:Instant-runoff voting

The article says, "The term 'instant runoff' is used because IRV is said to simulate a series of run-off elections tallied in rounds, as in an exhaustive ballot election." Most of the references I see to "exhaustive ballot" are Wikipedia mirrors, and "exhaustive balloting" brings up mostly references to the circa 1998 Australia constitutional convention, which picked between competing reforms; see http://www.suncoast.com.au/republic/convention/proc/hansard_1002_9.html . In reference to Australia, it is also mentioned at http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/pubs/odgers/chap1108.htm . It was also used to pick Papua New Guinea's new governor-general: http://www.pacificmagazine.net/issue/2004/06/01/regional-briefs-1 . Exhaustive balloting sometimes refers to the technique described in Robert's Rules (see p. 426-427, where it is described, although it is not termed "exhaustive balloting"). I think sometimes people use it to mean that you had to take a heck of a lot of successive ballots to elect someone. See, for instance, Japan from War to Peace: The Coaldrake Records 1939-1956, page 457, which describes a process that took 28 ballots to elect someone. Supposedly, the leaders of National and Labour in New Zealand are elected by exhaustive balloting; see http://keithrankin.com/rf_shorts_1998_06juna.html . See also http://www.national-renewal.org.au/ConCon/proc/hansard_1002_10.shtml for some interesting comments on exhaustive balloting.

Ah, here are some good refs: http://www.securevote.com.au/gloss_of_terms.html and http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmproced/40/4005.htm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1171438.stm . I'll include one of those. Some of these other refs may go the exhaustive ballot article, which only has dead links at present. Ron Duvall (talk) 00:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I was surprised to see a reference to eliminating candidates at the end of each round. My understanding of exhaustive balloting is that candidates are never eliminated except by the fact people stop voting for them on subsequent ballots. Sometimes they stop because the candidate has conceded and withdrawn from the race, with or without throwing his support to anyone else. Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (which simply calls this method "balloting"), specifically advises against eliminating anyone and points to real-world situations where an early-ballot last-place finisher finally ended up with a majority, as a compromise candidate, when the top contenders repeatedly deadlocked. Also, if a candidate is eliminated on each round, no election can take more than n-1 ballots, for n candidates. Jeepien (talk) 20:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)