Posts from July 2021

• Implementing a BLT parser by hand in Rust (vs pest and combine): OpenTally dev log

  30 July 2021 | single transferable vote rust webassembly opentally | Comment

  OpenTally is open-source software which can count single transferable vote elections specified using the BLT file format.

  Earlier this month, I replaced OpenTally's previous naive string-manipulation-based BLT parser with one using pest. A new parser was necessary to support extensions to the BLT… »

• Asyncify with vanilla JS/WebAssembly (wasm-bindgen compatible)

  28 July 2021 (updated 29 July 2021) | rust webassembly opentally | Comment

  Background

  WebAssembly is a technology for executing compiled programs in the web browser at near-native speeds. However, it has a number of current limitations, including that it does not support coroutines/asynchronicity.

  In OpenTally, WebAssembly is used to run code for counting an election. This… »

• Model rules for a computerised STV election using the weighted inclusive Gregory method

  24 July 2021 (updated 26 March 2022) | elections voting systems proportional representation single transferable vote opentally | Comment

  OpenTally is open-source software for counting single transferable vote (STV) elections. The default preset in OpenTally is ‘OpenTally WIGM’, a recommended set of simple STV rules designed for computer counting, using the weighted inclusive Gregory method, exact quotas and rational arithmetic.

  The weighted inclusive Gregory… »

• Reducing binary size with DIY dynamic dispatch: OpenTally dev log

  16 July 2021 | rust webassembly opentally | Comment

  Background

  OpenTally is open source software for the counting of preferential voting elections. One feature of OpenTally is support for various different representations of numbers, from floating-point arithmetic through to exact rational representations.

  In OpenTally, these are implemented using generics. For example, consider the following… »

• Compiling I D Hill's New Zealand Meek STV implementation: OpenTally dev log

  08 July 2021 (updated 22 July 2022) | elections voting systems proportional representation single transferable vote opentally | Comment

  In [1], I D Hill describes an implementation of Meek STV written in Pascal, which had been privately circulated since as early as 1999 [2]. The implementation is similar to the earlier ‘Algorithm 123’ Pascal implementation of Meek STV by Hill, Wichmann and… »

• Multiple constraints in STV elections: OpenTally dev log

  01 July 2021 (updated 18 June 2022) | elections voting systems proportional representation single transferable vote opentally | Comment

  OpenTally is open source software currently under development for the counting of elections using STV and related systems. Part of its feature set is the implementation of constraints on elections: for example, where a certain minimum or maximum number of candidates must be elected from… »