Ranked Voting New York State has decided it wants to move to a ranked choice voting system within the next 10 years for
Posted: Thu May 05, 2022 1:37 pm
Ranked Voting
New York State has decided it wants to move to a ranked
choice voting system within the next 10 years for its national
elections and it is soliciting bids from software developers around
the state to see who has the best, most reliable system. For
bid submission developers must provide a system that accepts the
raw vote from each county in New York state and use the raw results
to come up with a final winner. The system should be
transparent, providing each round's results and all county
tallies.
New York’s process:
All voters get to choose their ranked preference for
each office i.e.
1ST
2ND
3RD
4TH
5TH
Candidate A
X
Candidate B
X
Candidate C
X
Candidate D
X
Candidate E
X
The information will be tabulated in each county and a
single record for each individual voters’ choices will be provided
to the state election commissioner in a file. The records for
each county will be combined in a file and will be processed by
your application. An individual record (from the above
example) will look like the following…
43 2 5 3 1 4
Note that the first field of the record is the county
FIPS code (Federal Information Processing Standard) 43 is the code
for Herkimer County. The next five fields represent the voters’
candidate choice in the order A,B,C,D,E. (i.e this voters first
choice is candidate D)
Candidate designation will be the same for all counties
and each field is space separated.
The winner will be the candidate that achieves a
majority of the vote (<50). If after the first round of
processing there is not a majority winner the candidate with the
lowest rating for 1st choice will be removed from consideration.
However their second choice will now be counted as a first choice
for the remaining candidates. If a majority is still not
attained the next lowest 1st choice vote getter will be eliminated
however their second choice will now be counted as a first choice
for the remaining candidates and this continues until a majority is
attained.
Each round will display the percentage of 1st choice
votes for each candidate as well as the actual vote count. Once a
majority has been reached the program will declare the
winner.
The final report will also list the above breakdown for
each of New York’s 62 counties individually.
Overall assessment will be based on accuracy, code
optimization, and appropriate use of data structures.
New York State has decided it wants to move to a ranked
choice voting system within the next 10 years for its national
elections and it is soliciting bids from software developers around
the state to see who has the best, most reliable system. For
bid submission developers must provide a system that accepts the
raw vote from each county in New York state and use the raw results
to come up with a final winner. The system should be
transparent, providing each round's results and all county
tallies.
New York’s process:
All voters get to choose their ranked preference for
each office i.e.
1ST
2ND
3RD
4TH
5TH
Candidate A
X
Candidate B
X
Candidate C
X
Candidate D
X
Candidate E
X
The information will be tabulated in each county and a
single record for each individual voters’ choices will be provided
to the state election commissioner in a file. The records for
each county will be combined in a file and will be processed by
your application. An individual record (from the above
example) will look like the following…
43 2 5 3 1 4
Note that the first field of the record is the county
FIPS code (Federal Information Processing Standard) 43 is the code
for Herkimer County. The next five fields represent the voters’
candidate choice in the order A,B,C,D,E. (i.e this voters first
choice is candidate D)
Candidate designation will be the same for all counties
and each field is space separated.
The winner will be the candidate that achieves a
majority of the vote (<50). If after the first round of
processing there is not a majority winner the candidate with the
lowest rating for 1st choice will be removed from consideration.
However their second choice will now be counted as a first choice
for the remaining candidates. If a majority is still not
attained the next lowest 1st choice vote getter will be eliminated
however their second choice will now be counted as a first choice
for the remaining candidates and this continues until a majority is
attained.
Each round will display the percentage of 1st choice
votes for each candidate as well as the actual vote count. Once a
majority has been reached the program will declare the
winner.
The final report will also list the above breakdown for
each of New York’s 62 counties individually.
Overall assessment will be based on accuracy, code
optimization, and appropriate use of data structures.