RLAs for 2-Seat STV Elections: Revisited

Abstract

Single Transferable Vote (STV) elections are a principled approach to electing multiple candidates in a single election. Each ballot has a starting value of 1, and a candidate is elected if they gather a total vote value more than a defined quota. Votes over the quota have their value reduced by a transfer value so as to remove the quota, and are passed to the next candidate on the ballot. Risk-limiting audits (RLAs) are a statistically sound approach to election auditing which guarantees that failure to detect an error in the result is bounded by a limit. A first approach to RLAs for 2-seat STV elections has been defined. In this paper we show how we can improve this approach by reasoning about lower bounds on transfer values, and how we can extend the approach to partially audit an election, if the method does not support a full audit.