Setting up an election
- What is the difference between Condorcet voting and voting methods
that I am familiar with?
Condorcet voting methods let voters rank their preferences and do a good
job of aggregating all the voter preferences into a single ranking.
[ More information on Condorcet voting ]
- For how long a period should I enable voting?
This is up to you. The best time period depends on your voters.
For voters who are aware of the election or who check email frequently,
a couple of days is usually enough time. Most people vote right away, or
not at all. Election durations of more than a week are usually too
long, unless your intention is to set up a long-running public survey.
- I would like to separate out the acceptable choices from the
unacceptable choices. Can I do that?
Just create a choice named something like “choices ranked below this
are unacceptable”. You can then use the election results in
various ways. If you want reject choices that are considered unacceptable
by a plurality of voters, reject those that are ranked below this pseudo-choice.
If you want to find the choices that are acceptable to every voter,
they are the ones that unananimously (n–0) beat this pseudo-choice.
(This is handy for scheduling meetings where everyone needs to be present.)
- How big an election can I run?
CIVS is used regularly for elections with hundreds of voters. You can set up a
public election where any number of people can vote. Elections have been
successfully run with a couple of thousand voters, and this is a load it should
stand up to even if voters all try to vote around the same time. CIVS hasn't
been tested at 10,000 voters or higher. The server is implemented in
Perl, so it can handle about 4,000 voters per hour. If your voters don't show up
faster than that, it should be fine no matter how many voters there are. A
faster Java version is in the works. If you want to have a private election,
the system will only allow you to add 1,000 voters at a time, but in principle
you can have as many voters as you want. Note that using the experimental
proportional method for your election dramatically increases the load on the
CIVS server, so avoid that mode for large elections.
-
How reliable is CIVS?
There have been no data losses due to hardware failure on the Cornell
installation. A race condition in CIVS code caused some corruption of voting
data in one large election a couple of years ago, but did not seem to
affect the election result. This bug has long since been fixed in a way that
should prevent all future race conditions. Each election is stored in
a separate database, so data corruption can only affect only one election.
-
A complete ranking of choices could embarrass some candidates.
Can I avoid that?
Ordinarily, full election results are available to every voter. However,
you can designate a smaller set of people who are allowed to see the election
results. They can then report the winners to the voters, using some mechanism
outside of CIVS.
Running an election
- Some voters never got their voter keys. What do I do?
It depends on whether you sent the voter key to the right address in the first
place. If so, you can send it again by “adding” that voter with the
election control page. The same voter key will be generated, so
the voter won't be able to vote twice. If the email address was broken,
then email should have bounced. In that case it should be safe to add
the voter under their correct email address. You can check with the CIVS
supervisor whether the email bounced, assuming you were not notified.
- Why doesn't the election end automatically at the specified time?
We wanted to give election supervisors the flexibility to write complex
specifications of when the election should end, such as “by March 3 or
when we get at least 100 votes”. It's too hard to handle all these cases.
The supervisor can easily monitor election progress through the election control
page. The supervisor needs to...supervise.
- The voters haven't bothered to vote. Can I send them their voter
keys again?
Yes, just “add” them again at the election control page.
This will send them all email. Make sure you use exactly the same email address
you did the first time; otherwise, a new voter key will be generated because
it's a different voter as far as CIVS can tell. For security and privacy reasons,
CIVS doesn't record voter email or voter keys, so it has no way to send an already
generated voter key to a new email address.
-
How long will election results remain available?
We are making a best effort to keep election results forever, for any election
that receives more than one vote and doesn't look like a test of the system.
However, you may want to make a copy of the election results page for
posterity.
- Why doesn't the system notify voters when the election has ended?
Because it doesn't know who the voters are any more. Once voter keys are
sent out, all information about the voters is destroyed. It's the job of
the election supervisor to close the election and notify voters or
result recipients.
- Can I make current election results visible before the election closes?
This increases the danger of strategic voting. However, it is the
behavior for “public” elections (i.e., polls).
Voting
- What does “no opinion” mean?
It means you are providing no information about how this choice ranks with
respect to the other choices. For example, if you give one choice the rank 1,
and give all other choices the rank “no opinion”, your ballot
becomes useless because it doesn't express any preferences. Voters often pick
“no opinion” when what they mean is that they don't like the choice
or that they don't have any information about it. In these situations, it is often better to give the choice a low rank rather than to select “no
opinion”. A good reason for a voter to give a choice the rank
``no opinion'' is because the voter isn't supposed to
express an opinion about that choice.
Security and Privacy
For a discussion of security and privacy in CIVS, see
here.