The article ‘Why electronic voting is seen as a “difficult journey”’ (July 7) is informative but contains some mistakes.
The STV-PR voting system used in Malta does involve picking ballot papers randomly for transfer at full value (one vote) but that process is not known as “the inclusive Gregory method”.
It is also wrong to suggest that it is the “last parcel only” transfer that introduces randomness to the results. The randomness arises from selecting ballot papers at random for transfer, not from restricting the selection to the “last parcel”.
All the Gregory methods involve transfers of ballot papers at fractional values, that is, at values less than one vote. This method was devised by J. B. Gregory in 1880 to avoid the need to select ballot papers for transfer randomly. Thus, we have known for a very long time how to remove all the chance effects from counting of STV votes.
In its original form, the Gregory method was applied with proper fractions. A decimalised version of the Gregory method is used for public elections in Northern Ireland where the STV ballot papers are counted manually.
The inclusive Gregory method is used only in STV-PR elections to the Australian Federal Senate. This implementation is defective as it increases the value of some ballot papers to more than one vote with corresponding reductions in the value of other ballot papers. It thus does not conform to the basic requirement of ‘one person, one vote’. It should never be used in any elections.
The weighted inclusive Gregory method overcomes the defect in the inclusive Gregory method.
This is the version of STV-PR that is used in Scotland to count the votes in the local government council elections: 32 councils; 353 wards, that is, 353 separate STV-PR elections.
In these elections the votes are recorded on conventional ballot papers which are then scanned and, after adjudication for doubtful markings, are counted electronically.
This is done under public scrutiny at 32 separate counting centres, one for each council area. Thus, the original record of each vote is retained.
Scotland does not use e-voting for public elections and candidates’ names currently are printed on the ballot papers in alphabetical order, by family name and then given a name.