Include Indication of Winners

[bradley-holt]

Description

Please include an indication of the winner(s) for ballot items at the whole district level where the results are complete.

Steps to Reproduce

curl 'https://example.org/town-meeting-season-2011/town-meeting-day-2011/ward-1/ward-1-city-council' \
-H 'Accept: text/html'

Actual Results

  …
  <ul>
  <li class="result">
    <span class="option candidate">Sharon Bushor (I) </span>
    <span class="votes" title="416">416 (100.0%)</span>
  </li>
  …

Expected Results

  …
  <ul>
  <li class="result winner">
    <span class="option candidate">Sharon Bushor (I) </span>
    <span class="votes" title="416">416 (100.0%)</span>
  </li>
  …

Additional Comments

Note that if you complete issue #5 first then the results will be in a table instead. Regardless, the winner class goes on the same HTML element that has the result class. I'm assuming that the ballot item in this example is for a whole district where the results are complete, which may be an incorrect assumption. Regardless, this example should illustrate the desired outcome.

[gdoteof]

This opens up a whole can of worms: how do we determine the winner?

I see two options, and (out of laziness) heavily leaned toward the latter now that we have made some deep-rooted architectural decisions.

The way I would have liked to do this from the beginning is to set up a new hook that lets modules declare ways to win; and actually have those be the 'ballot item type'.

The way I would like to do it now is simply hard code in a the ones we are likely to use: top X, >50%, >67%.. any others?

[bradley-holt]

@gdoteof, I think those are the main ones we'll use (at least for now). We may need both >50% and >=50%, if my memory serves me correctly (same for 2/3rds?). @acrawford, can you think of any other types of winning methods that will come up on Town Meeting Day?

[gdoteof]

Something like:

• =50%

• 50%

• 2/3

• =2/3

• Top N

I am thinking: A drop down with three (for now) options:

• N

• =N

• Top N

A textbox labeled: N

Then we will have three functions something like

function elec_winner_by_top_n(&$results, $n){
...
}

function elec_winner_by_gt_n(&$results, $n){
...
}

function elec_winner_by_gte_n(&$results, $n){
...
}

[bradley-holt]

Makes sense to me. There may be scenarios where two (or maybe more) winning methods are in effect (I don't know if we documented a specific example of this scenario). But, I don't know if that scenario will exist on Town Meeting Day.

Some (most?) referendums have a 50%+1 winning threshold. Is this mathematically the same as >50%? I think so, but something to watch out for depending on how you calculate percentage.

[acrawford]

I think that plus 1 may be +1% (as in the dem caucus) or may be +1 vote (for elections except mayor) can we ignore this?

Mayor of Burlington requires a plurality that is also > 40% of the total vote count, otherwise a runoff election will go forward. so in this case N = 40% with ">" selected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting_in_the_United_States#2010_Burlington_repeal

as a bolt-on solution for now, I think this will work.

[gdoteof]

@acrawford you tell us if we can ignore it :)

Should we have a fourth option: IRV >

?

[gdoteof]

How do we want this to look in the JSON?

[bradley-holt]

Maybe a boolean winner field on each result? If winners aren't being determined (i.e. it's a "Partial District" and/or "Incomplete Results"), then I'd exclude the winner field altogether.

[gdoteof]

added in a1360ef

[acrawford]

you can ignore IRV, as it was repealed. all looks good on this front

[bradley-holt]

Looks good in both HTML and JSON, thanks!