Re: A database of electoral results?

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 18:41:47 +0000, Paul wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
> I am planning a database of the results for the NoI (North of Ireland)
> assembly elections.
>
> Background information can be found here http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/
>
>
> For those not used to the STV PR method used in elections in Ireland
> (the State) or the NoI (still part of the United Kingdom), all I can
> suggest is to search for STV PR on your favourite search engine.
>
> Basically constituencies are multi-seats and voters vote for their
> choice in order of preference (1,2,3,4... &c.) and when a person is
> elected, their surplus is transferred to still unelected candidates.
>
> It's quite a complex system, and makes for great amateur psephology.
>
>
> This will be a proper SQL database that will allow for sophisticated
> queries about the results.
>
>
> What I would like to know from this group is:
>
> "Does anybody know of logical and/or data models that have been used in
> the past to model election data?" - i.e. Candidate, Constituency,
> Party, Election &c. (Sample tables and fields would be nice! 8-);
>
> And,
>
> "Particularly in the case of STV PR elections?":
>
>
> BTW, I did search in the library of free datamodels here
> http://www.databaseanswers.com/data_models/index.htm and found nothing.
>
>
> Any URL's, references, discussions, texts, ideas &c. welcome.
>
>
>
> Paul...
>
>
> I did look at
> http://bolson.org/voting/essay.html
> and
> http://www.logicaldatastructures.com/elections.htm
>
> and I don't see much there.

The process may be complicated but the database should be fairly simple. After all the database does not do the processing -- it serves to hold the results of the processing. Using an RDBMS the database should be keyed on a table with each row describing one candidate, including actual and adjusted vote columns. Your application logic -- not the database -- will have to handle the definition of what is surplus and its transfer. Received on Sun Nov 09 2003 - 05:43:14 CET