What makes a voting system fair?

Posted by nikhitalonely | Filed under 360 degree feedback, 360 feedback, 360 survey, 360 surveys, Australia, HK, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Phillipines, Singapore, South Africa, UAE, USA, canada, e voting, electronic voting system, online elections, online survey, online survey service, online survey software, online surveys, online voting, online voting software, online voting system, uk, voting systems, workplace agreement, workplace agreements

What makes a voting system fair?

Most will agree that “fairness” of the vote is the most important criteria for a voting system whether paper voting or online voting.  “Fairest” vote could be defined as the vote which best represents the wish of the majority of the electorate. 

Many things can affect fairness of the vote. For example:

    * the openness of the contest to willing candidates
    * the ease with which people can vote and gain access to information on candidates
    * the vote counting method
    * the integrity of the vote harvest, vote counting and result reporting
    * the existence and transparency of an audit trail
    * ease with which voters can confirm that their vote was recorded and counted correctly, and
    * the time, cost and resources required to run a vote. 

The choice between an online voting system, paper voting system or hybrid voting system can affect all these aspects of the vote fairness.  As the manager of BigPulse.com, a firm that has specialized in high security online voting for ten years, my bias is clearly declared towards online voting and in some cases hybrid voting. 

Security and protection of anonymity are the hardest to get right in any voting system, requiring many years of testing in electronic voting systems.  However a properly tested online voting system can offer many advantages for security, transparency, accessibility, flexibility and cost.

A flexible online voting system will cater for many vote counting methods. The choice of vote counting method is an important consideration in fairness, for example first-past-the- post voting (FPTP) , Single Transferable Vote (STV), Instant-runoff voting (IRV) or range voting – and each method can produce different winners.

However it is not always clear which voting counting method provides the best measurement of majority opinion as there is not always a definitive mathematical answer to this question.

For example a single round vote FPTP contest with three or more candidates can produce a winner which never wins in a paired contest with any other candidate, while it is possible that a losing candidate in a FPTP vote contest may win in any paired contest.  Most people will agree that in this case the FPTP result is not fair and an alternative voting method that comes closer to emulating the paired result is fairer. Preferential voting, that is, ranked voting methods and FPTP with multiple rounds of voting tend to reduce this risk of eliminating candidates that do better in paired contests.   

Maximizing the degree of proportional representation and minimizing the incentive for strategic voting are two important measures of fairness. Proportional representation means the elected candidates represent the natural divisions within the electorate.  Strategic voting means voting for what you think is the best possible or likely outcome even if it means not voting according to your true preferences – for example in a contest with three or more candidates, voters can be tempted to guess how others will vote and attempt to vote in a manner that gives the best likely result, rather than voting their true preferences.

A degree of proportional representation is possible in contests with more than one winner, the more winners the more proportional it can be.  In this case the form of preferential or ranked voting known as Single Transferable Vote is fairer than FPTP because the Single Transferable Vote is much better than FPTP at producing proportional representation.  However in a single winner contest (known as instant-runoff in the case of Single Transferable Vote), neither system can produce proportional representation, although Single Transferable Vote may be considered fairer in the sense that it leaves the door open to proportional representation.

If elimination of strategic voting is the criteria of fairness then the fair choice between FPTP and instant-runoff is not quite so obvious as it depends on the number of candidates and how many rounds of voting can be tolerated with FPTP voting.  For example, if only one candidate is eliminated after each round of voting then, from the perspective of strategic voting, the FPTP vote is just as fair as instant run off and also allows people to simply vote their first preference in each round of voting.

However FPTP is inferior to instant-runoff when more than one candidate is eliminated after any round of FPTP voting.  Also with multiple round FPTP voting, voter fatigue, cost and time delay may all impact on fairness.  For example a contest with 10 candidates can require up to nine rounds of voting using FPTP if it is to match the fairness of an instant runoff vote. The instant-runoff vote requires only one round of voting.

For more information : online elections, online voting system, online voting software

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Read more | Comments (0) | December 28th, 2009

offshore softaware development

Posted by nikhitalonely | Filed under Affordable Seo Service, Ecommerce web development, India, Joomla development, Offshore software development India, SEO, Software outsourcing, Software outsourcing India, affordable web design, asp.net development, cmssimple, development, dim-dim solutions, drupa l, ecommerce development, interspire, link building, magento, offshore, outsourcing India, php, seo packages, services, software development, web development, zencart development

We are facing one of the largest economic slowdown, and everyone seems to be busier in cost cutting and trying to maintain the margins. In the Information Technology Industry there is a good option available to increase your profits and for cost cutting. It is known as offshore software development . Offshore software development means having your software development centre at offshore location like India, where Software developers are very talented and easily available at very low wages compare to European and American Countries. India is become a hub for the Offshore software development.

Offshore software development in India helps in many ways. It can help you to cost cutting up to 40% or even more. Largest talent pool is available in India. Indian Government Policies support offshore software development. And also technocrats are very comfortable with English communication. India has good infrastructure available of Software development.So, it’s a time to nurture your software business by having offshore software development in India.

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Read more | Comments (0) | May 25th, 2009

Affordable seo services

Posted by nikhitalonely | Filed under Affordable Seo Service, Ecommerce web development, India, Joomla development, Offshore software development India, SEO, Software outsourcing, Software outsourcing India, affordable web design, asp.net development, cmssimple, development, dim-dim solutions, drupal, ecommerce development, interspire, link building, magento, offshore, outsourcing India, php, seo packages, services, software development, web development, zencart development

This term is very new for many people and for some people it is most important word. IF you are in Internet business then Search Engine Optimization is inevitable thing to perform for your website. Even if you have good website, best server, best products, best prices your website does not carry a value if there is no visitors on the site. SEO helps you to get more visitors, to attract targeted audience.

Search engine optimization will make your site optimize for all major search engines. There are many things required to do for SEO. SEO contains optimizing your website content, choosing best keywords, placing keywords, page titles, updating Meta, site map creation adding robots.txt file. These all are for On page optimization. Off page optimization is for telling people about your website for that you will require to build links in different website. Getting back links from high traffic website will help you. There are some black hat seo methods too which should be avoided because Search engines will ban those kind of seo work.. Black hat seo means placing keywords everywhere without meaning. Placing links without meaning. Creating door way pages.. These will certainly not help. Only Organic SEO helps to get you rank better and get desired organic position.

Benefits of SEO services are if you want sell your business you have to be in top of the search engines there are some alternatives like Google ad words but SEO will be far more affordable then Adword Pay per click campaign. Also Seo will make your site listed in organic search not in sponsored link section. People mostly click on organic results. SEO services India has also its own benefits. As we all know India is centre of offshore software development, there are plenty of seo experts available at very low cost. Sometime SEO services from India can save you more than 70% of your original budget. There are many seo experts are available who provide affordable seo services in India. So, let’s nurture your business with the affordable seo experts from India.

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Read more | Comments (0) | May 25th, 2009

offshore software development

Posted by nikhitalonely | Filed under Affordable Seo Service, Ecommerce web development, India, Joomla development, Offshore software development India, SEO, Software outsourcing, Software outsourcing India, affordable web design, asp.net development, cmssimple, development, dim-dim solutions, drupa l, ecommerce development, interspire, link building, magento, offshore, outsourcing India, php, seo packages, services, software development, web development, zencart development

Offshore software development is now inevitable truth in Information technology Industry. All companies prefer to outsource work in to offshore development centre which decreases development cost significantly. India is a centre of this offshore software development . India has been a global in software outsourcing industry from last one decade.

Why people Prefer offshore software development?

Companies in software business or in any other business have to set up infrastructure if they want to start software development centre. Have to set management, hire staff. These are not every time feasibly. And if companies are in the country where resource is in scarcity they have to put lot of cost to develop a centre. And on the other side Offshore software development centre have very low infrastructure cost. Talents are easily available at very lower salaries. This ultimately turns in to significant increase in profit for the companies.

India is most preferred offshore software development in centre. Because large talent of software professional. People in India are recognized world wide a hard worker than any other. Government policies are very supportive for offshore development. Infrastructure cost is affordable. Communication and networks are advanced. India is leading in software development, call centre, accounting, internet marketing, web development, web designing, graphic designing and in many other internet related services. If you are looking for starting offshore software development then let’s nurture your business with us.

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Read more | Comments (3) | May 25th, 2009